Shirley Chung, “Top Chef” alum and restaurateur, announced she’s been diagnosed with Stage 4 tongue cancer.
“Hiiiii loves, I have some personal news to share with you,” Chung wrote in the caption of her Instagram post on July 26. The post includes a slideshow of photos and video of Chung shaving her head while receiving cancer treatment.
The Beijing-born chef detailed a series of dental issues she’d been experiencing since December, including “severely” biting her tongue, fracturing a tooth and the development of ulcers in her mouth. While she initially thought it was all because of her heavy teeth grinding, an oral surgeon discovered a tumor under her tongue while treating the ulcers.
“A few days later,” she wrote, “I was diagnosed.”
Chung goes on to say she was “very calm” when she first heard the news, adding that she’s always been someone who thrives under pressure: “I was extremely focused on getting all the tests and scans as fast as possible, so I can start on the treatment plans.”
Then, reality set in on June 2, when her oncologist called to discuss treatment plans.
“I broke down, crying, trying to put thoughts together and ask questions but physically couldn’t, all I heard was ‘option 1, surgery, 100% removal of your tongue,’” Chung wrote.
She then heard about a “ unicorn case” out of the University of Chicago, where another chef, Grant Achatz, was cured using radiation and chemotherapy.
“I still don’t understand how surgeons say, the only anything we can do is cut your tongue out; we have to cut your tongue out, first step, cut your tongue out,” Daniel J. Haraf, medical director of radiation and oncology at UChicago Medicine said in an interview. “And I go, why should that be the first step?”
While Chung was aware that tongue removal had a higher success rate, that didn’t matter as much to the TV personality.
“Higher survival rate, or keep my tongue? I chose to keep my tongue,” Chung said. “I am a fighter, I am a chef, I can be that unicorn too.”
So, she headed to Chicago and, as of Friday, finished her first six weeks of chemo, with “many more to go.” She called her four-times-weekly trips to the hospital “a full time job,” and said it’s been working so far. “My tumor is shrinking, my speech is much better and I can eat most normal food now,” she added.
Chung, who immigrated to the U.S. at 17 years old, had a Silicon Valley career prior to becoming a chef. She then worked her way through different restaurant groups until she opened her own modern Chinese restaurant in Orange County, California, called Twenty Eight. She was a contestant on seasons 11 (where she made it into the top three) and 14 (runner up) of Bravo’s “Top Chef.”
She said through the trials that come with fighting cancer, she’s learned to lean on others and accept support, “to let go, to be more vulnerable.” It took her two weeks to decide whether she should tell her parents about the diagnosis, and until Friday, the only other people who knew were her “close circle of friends” and her sister.
“I am learning, I can be strong 98% of the time, it’s ok to be not ok,” she wrote. “I have a long road to recovery in front of me. Your love and support will carry me through. Cheer me on, Shirley Chung 2.0 will be reborn in 2025!”
Her cheering section got loud, with friends and chefs like Alex Guarnaschelli, Kardea Brown, Aarti Sequeira and Jet Tila leaving supportive comments on the post.
Guarnaschelli told Chung to not “be a chef at this time,” but instead “be a person who’s cool with getting support and love.”
“Can I just speak to the person you are,” Brown wrote in the comments. The chef said she met Chung the day before she received her treatment plan, “but we had no clue about the battle you were fighting.” She continued on, writing about how Chung cooked that night and “had the biggest smile on your face the entire time,” which she wrote “speaks volumes about your character.”
“This cancer clearly hasn’t met Shirley Chung,” Sequeira wrote. “Like, why would you even try?”
A seemingly endless stream of other chefs — Andrew Zimmern, Gregory Gourdet, Nina Compton, Leah Cohen, Michael Voltaggio and more — chimed in as well with words of encouragement and support.
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