Shirley Chung's Tongue Cancer Journey
- “Top Chef” alum Shirley Chung—who recovering from stage four tongue cancer, a type of oral cancer that is also referred to as a head and neck cancer—is mourning the loss of her “warrior sister” who helped her “never” lose hope.
- Grief is a difficult, truly personal process, something Chung has certainly shown. Some find solace in vulnerability and sharing how they feel with others. While working through grief and vulnerable tackling of the emotions that accompany it, some find tools like therapy to be helpful. Support groups can also be a benefit for those who are feeling isolated in their feelings of grief. Faith can also be a powerful coping mechanism for some.
- Whichever methods of support you look for after cancer loss, you should know that there is no correct way to grieve. There is no perfect timeline for grieving, either.
- Tongue cancer doesn’t always show signs, but symptoms can include: a lump on the side of the tongue that touches the teeth, pain, a sense of fullness in the throat, difficulty swallowing, the feeling of a lump in the neck or throat, voice changes and ear pain.
- Tongue cancer is more commonly found in people older than 40. In addition, tongue cancer is twice as common in men, and smokers are five times more likely to develop tongue cancer than nonsmokers.
The 48-year-old Chinese-American chef, known for being finalist in “Top Chef: New Orleans” and “Top Chef: Charleston,” is certainly experiencing a whirlwind of emotions after completing a major milestone in her cancer recovery, getting her “G-tube” removed, and now she’s faced with an immense amount of grief as her beloved friend, who she endured cancer treatment alongside, has passed away.
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Chung continued, “We were the girls never shut up, always giggling at 7am for radiation, coordinating outfits even when our neck and face were covered with blisters. Yesss, we were those tongue cancer patients who won’t stop talking about food!!
“During my darkest most painful moments, I never lost hope, because I had you, you understood, you were fighting right next to me.”
After recounting how the oncology wards and nurses “loved” the two of them as they underwent treatment, she added, “I still have all the sticky notes you wrote to me when we couldn’t talk. And I hope UoC will really roll out their cancer patients companions program inspired by our friendship like they said, continue your legacy.
“I am going to keep a piece of you in my heart forever, take you to all the places that we said we are going to visit, go to all the restaurants we saved in NY for our girl trip. Mike said he will find your list of food carvings you wrote when we were in the hospital for me, and I will cook and eat through that list for you.”
Expert Resources On Coping With Loss
- Mental Health: Understanding the Three Wellsprings of Vitality
- Dealing With Grief Related to Health Problems
- How to Be Realistically Optimistic: Coping With Mental Health Long-Term
- How to Handle the Emotional Toll of Caring for a Loved One: Prioritizing Your Mental Health
- Can Turning To Faith Help You During A Cancer Journey? Some People, And Studies, Say Yes.
- SN & You Presents Mental Health: Coping With Emotions
She concluded, “I am going to live fuller, love harder, fear less, laugh even louder. I know you are in heaven looking down, continuing to protect me, my fierce beautiful angel. I Love you.”
A friend of Aubryn commented, “Aubryn was my best friend and I want to thank you so much for being the friend that you were to her.
“She talked so highly of you and it gave me comfort to know she wasn’t alone when she went in for her treatments and she had someone who understood what she was going through. I hope you know how important you were to her and how much I truly appreciate you being a part of her journey.”
The sweet words prompted Chung to reply, “I was so lucky to have her as my friend. She was my light, my rock through our journeys together. She will live on through us.”
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Shirley Chung’s Tongue Cancer Diagnosis
Chung, who made the difficult decision to close her L.A. restaurant called Ms. Chi Cafe while she focuses on her recovery, first announced her diagnosis in July 2024.
“I have some personal news to share with you. Since last year December, I had a series of dental issues, I bit my tongue severely; I fractured my tooth and had to extract it and get an implant… we thought it was because I am a heavy teeth grinder,” she said in an Instagram post.
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“And I was too busy to see a EMT specialist. The end of May, ulcers erupted in my mouth and my oral surgeon discovered a hidden tumor under my tongue. A few days later, I was diagnosed, stage 4 tongue cancer, as cancer cells also spread into my lymph nodes.”
While receiving her diagnosis, all Chung said she heard was “‘option 1, surgery, 100% removal of your tongue’ … Jimmy was holding it together for both of us, asking if we have any option that I can keep my tongue and the survival rates.”
Thankfully, Chung and her husband’s curiosity and determination to find another treatment option led her doctor to tell them about a special case that took place at the University of Chicago. It was there they were told about how another person battling tongue cancer was cured through chemotherapy and radiation in Chicago, something she described as a “unicorn case.”
“Higher survival rate, or keep my tongue? I chose to keep my tongue, I am a fighter, I am a chef, I can be that unicorn too,” Chung said at the time.
By December 2024, Chung shared a celebratory Instagram post, revealing that she hit a milestone in her cancer treatment, writing, “Heyyy loves, it’s been a while since my last update.I have completed a few milestones in my cancer fighting journey in the last 2 months.
“I finished my 10 weeks radiation and chemo in patient treatments at @uchicago, and ring the victory bells with my treatment team and friends + family by my side! And as I thought the toughest part of cancer has passed…I experienced the hardest / worst days of my life during recovery. ”
She then noted how just 2 weeks after undergoing treatment, she suffered major discomfort as a side effect from radiation and chemotherapy all across her body.
Chung explained, “My neck, lips and jawline were covered with blisters from the radiation, my tongue and throat were peeling & bleeding all the time. I couldn’t sleep through the night, was waking up every 2 hours coughing up blood and mucus.
“My days were filled with clean and rinse my mouth, clean and change dressing on my neck, self inject pain meds every 3 hours, tube feed nutritional shakes and water. My pain finally got better 3 weeks ago. The first sip of water was glorious, it was still super painful, but after 3 months of not being able to swallow anything, it was a small win!”
Chung revealed she has since been able to learn how to drink smoothies again, as well as eat soups, ice cream and egg custard.
After noting her taste buds are slowing returning to normally, she added, “I can taste 50% of sweet and savory and all the warm spices.”
Chung also recounted having an emergency surgery to replace her “G tube,” otherwise known as a gastrostomy tube, which is surgically placed in one’s body through the abdomen to the stomach to bring in nutrition, fluids, and medicine.
Her most recent procedure was to have her “G-tube” removed, which she has celebrated as just another step in her healing process.
A G-tube is something which MedlinePlus describes as a “gastrostomy feeding tube insertion” which is put in place through something called an endoscopy.
“After the endoscopy tube is inserted into the stomach, the skin over the left side of the belly (abdomen) area is cleaned and numbed. Your surgeon makes a small surgical cut in this area,” MedlinePlus explains. “The G-tube is inserted through this cut into the stomach. The tube is small, flexible, and hollow. Your surgeon uses stitches to close the stomach around the tube.”
The procedure is often performed for a variety of reasons and the length of time a patient needs a G-tube can range from a short amount of time to permanently.
Tongue Cancer: Understanding the Cause of Head & Neck Cancers
According to Cedars-Sinai, several types of cancer develop in the tongue, with the most common being squamous cell carcinoma. The two types of tongue cancer are:
- Cancer of the oral tongue, which consists of the front two-thirds of the tongue that you can stick.
- Cancer of the base of the tongue, the area which is the back one-third of the tongue that extends down the throat.
Although some people may be diagnosed with tongue cancer and have no risk factors, Cedars-Sinai says this type of cancer is most commonly found in adults 40 years old and up. Men are also twice as likely to be diagnosed with tongue cancer.
Other risk factors, as per Cedars-Sinai include:
- Smoking and drinking alcohol [smokers are 5x more likely to develop tongue cancer than nonsmokers]
- Human papillomavirus (HPV)
- African-American men have a greater risk than caucasians
It’s unclear what led to Shirley Chung’s diagnosis, but it’s important to understand that symptoms of tongue cancer can include:
- An unusual lump on the side of the tongue
- An ulcer-like lump, of a grayish-pink to red color
- A lump that bleeds easily when touched
Tongue cancer may be hard to spot in its early stages, however, when the cancer develops, patients may experience trouble with swallowing, voice changes, pain in the ear, pain in the throat, or a feeling of fullness in the throat.
HPV and Cancer Risk: The Basics
As for how throat cancer is diagnosed, it’s usually done through X-rays, CT scans, and PET scans. A diagnosis often requires a biopsy.
For tongue cancer treatment, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are usually done.
It’s much more common to know someone who has a head or neck cancer, like tongue cancer, now-a-days than it was several decades ago. And that’s because of its strong connection to the human papillomavirus, also known as HPV, which is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States.
“From the 1980s to the 2010s, the rate of HPV-related head and neck cancers has gone up by 300 percent,” Dr. Ted Teknos, a head and neck cancer specialist, and president and scientific director of University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio, told SurvivorNet during a previous interview.
The vast majority of humans in the United States both men and women will eventually get infected with HPV, according to Dr. Allen Ho, a head and neck surgeon at Cedars-Sinai.
“The important thing to know about HPV is that there are many different strains, and only a couple of them tend to be more cancer-inducing,” he told SurvivorNet.
“Probably less than 1 percent of the population who get infected happen to have the cancer-causing virus that somehow their immune system fails to clear, and over 15 to 20 years it develops from a viral infection into a tumor, and a cancer.”
It’s unclear whether HPV alone is enough to trigger the changes in your cells that lead to head and neck cancers, or whether this happens in combination with other risk factors like smoking.
How to Cope After Losing a Loved One to Cancer
Grief is defined as the devastation that occurs when we lose someone. Grieving comes in five stages, commonly referred to as the “five stages of grief.”
The stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These labels help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. These stages can occur in any order.
As you find yourself experiencing some of these stages, remember that the emotions you are feeling are meaningful but also temporary. If you approach them with compassion, kindness, and eventual acceptance, you will come away from this period with a renewed sense of resilience and purpose.
“Grief comes in waves,” says Dr. Scott Irwin, a psychiatrist and Director of Supportive Care Services at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Dealing With Grief After a Cancer Diagnosis
“They’re grieving the change in their life; the future they had imagined is now different.”
Some days can be more challenging than others, but Dr. Irwin says talk therapy can be helpful. It’s important to reach out to your doctor, a therapist, or support groups in your community for the help you need.
Responding to Stress: How to Cope With Complex & Changing Emotions
When a stressful life event occurs, people may react with a range of different (and quickly changing) emotions. This is completely normal.
“The way people respond is very variable,” Psychiatrist Dr. Lori Plutchik tells SurvivorNet. “Very much consistent with how they respond to stresses and challenges in their life in general.”
In this video, Dr. Plutchik is speaking mostly about how people react after a cancer diagnosis which can be a huge range of emotions from fear to anger to determination.
However, the conclusion remains the same no matter what stressor someone may be dealing with: your emotions are valid and seeking mental health help may look different for every person.
“People have a range of emotions when they’re diagnosed with cancer,” Dr. Plutchik explains. “And they can include fear, anger … and these emotions tend to be fluid. They can recede and return based on where someone is in the process. Going through a cancer diagnosis is just the beginning of a complicated, complicated process.”
Dr. Plutchik explains that the patient, or person going through the stressful event, should accept that emotions will be fluid. You may feel fine one day and then feel a massive wave of stress the next. It’s also important for those you look to for support whether that’s a therapist, friends and family, or both to understand the fluidity of stress-related emotions.
If a stressful event is affecting how you think and feel, it may be time to seek some sort of mental health treatment. This could mean traditional talk therapy, medication, changing lifestyle habits (like exercise and diet), seeking out a support group, or many other approaches.
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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