At one of my previous churches, the drummer came down with cancer (I'm thinking it was brain cancer). He eventually stopped being the drummer until he was well enough to come back, and missed church often due to being sick or going in for chemo.
After a few days of being diagnosed, the doctors told him that he would only live for six more months. Naturally, a lot of people were quite sad. He continued fighting through it for many months. He surpassed the six month mark. He even made it into remission and began drumming again and it seemed like the doctors were wrong.
A couple months after that, his cancer came back at a crippling force out of nowhere. Two weeks later, he was dead. We went to his funeral.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/emissourian/obituary.aspx?n=kerry-brad-little&pid=161325806Apologies for the surprise bad ending. Your cousin's friend can hopefully beat the cancer and be in a normal state again.