Understanding Tongue Cancer
- “Top Chef” alum Shirley Chung, 48, has informed her fans that her “fighting spirit” is helping her battle stage four tongue cancer, a type of oral cancer that is also referred to as a head and neck cancer.
- A mouth sore may be painful and inflamed from the start but heal within two or three weeks. On the other hand, a cancerous lump may not be painful in the early stages and it won’t get better over time.
- 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.
Chung, 48, captioned her post, “Hiii Loves! I am on the new show @foodnetwork , House of Knives! Shirley 1.0 shot this before the cancer diagnosis. Not only this competition tested our cooking skills, but also strategy plays.
Read MoreView this post on Instagram
“House of Knives” is set to premier on Tuesday, March 18. The show features celebrity chef Scott Conant hosting a competition between six chefs.
“The chefs create dishes using a signature ingredient in hopes of impressing Culinary Council judges Marcus Samuelsson and Judy Joo to become the very first ruler of the game and avoid banishment,” a description of the show, shared by Chung, reads.
“Then, a culinary legend enters the arena and rattles the nerves of the remaining contenders, while a huge advantage is given to the chef who demonstrates the best mastery of spicy cuisine. One contender’s shocking strategy proves that culinary expertise alone won’t keep you safe in the House of Knives.”
Another post, shared by Chung, who completed radiation and chemotherapy treatments last year, showed a photo of the first round of contender chefs on the show.
Chung wrote alongside the photo, “Yes, this was 1.0 me filmed it before the cancer diagnosis, for those of you that were asking in the comments.
“This is one of my favorite culinary competitions that I competed on, we got to cook our best dishes without much limits, and we had a well stocked pantry and equipment room that catered to our different cultures and cooking styles.”
View this post on Instagram
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.
View this post on Instagram
“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.
Expert Resources on HPV-Related Cancers
- Get the Facts: What Do We Know About HPV-Linked Throat Cancer?
- Millions More Americans Now Eligible to be Vaccinated Against HPV-Related Cancers
- The HPV Vaccine Gardasil Now Approved For Prevention of Head & Neck Cancers– As Cases Rise in Men
- Majority of Throat Cancer Diagnoses Are Caused by HPV – Here’s What You Need to Know
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.
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.
Power of Support
If you were recently diagnosed with cancer, you likely know about the wide range of emotions that news can bring. This is one of the most challenging phases of the cancer journey to overcome.
However, a team of supporters can be most useful during these early stages. Your supporters can be close family members and friends or people from outside your inner circle.
WATCH: Sharing details about your cancer diagnosis.
“Some people don’t need to go outside their family and friends circle. They feel like they have enough support there,” New York-based psychiatrist Dr. Lori Plutchik tells SurvivorNet.
“But for people who feel like they need a little bit more, it is important to reach out to a mental health professional,” she added.
One benefit of having supporters is that they can help alleviate stress and anxiety following your diagnosis and advocate for you during treatment.
Sometimes, it is not always easy to share news you have cancer, even among loved ones. In such instances, you can seek a trained professional to center your support group around. Mental health professionals can help fill this space because many are trained to help you navigate your cancer treatment.
“Make sure that the mental health professional that you work with is reaching out with your consent to the rest of your team, to the oncologist, to the surgeon, it can also be helpful to reach out to family, friends, and any other caretakers that may be involved in the person’s treatment,” Dr. Plutchik said.
Dr. Plutchki recommends cancer patients consider the following three steps to get the help they need after a diagnosis:
- Step #1: Seek additional support if you need it (this could mean speaking to a mental health professional or seeking out a support group)
- Step #2: Look for a mental health professional with experience helping people in your situation.
- Step #3: Keep your care team connected. This may include your friends and loved ones, your therapist, and the doctors who are treating your cancer.
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
