Former 'Top Chef' star Fatima Ali gives a heartbreaking cancer update: 'Right now, all I need are prayers'

Fatima Ali competes on <em>Top Chef</em> in 2017. (Photo: Tommy Garcia/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
Fatima Ali competes on Top Chef in 2017. (Photo: Tommy Garcia/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Fatima Ali has been lying low on social media as she deals with cancer, but on Friday, she gave a heartbreaking update on her condition.

The 29-year-old chef, who appeared on Season 15 of Bravo’s Top Chef last year, explained that her health is deteriorating.

While Ali requested prayers, she also asked forgiveness from people whom she may have hurt in the past, and thanked the people who have given her joy.

Ali was first diagnosed with bone and soft tissue Ewing’s sarcoma in 2017, and underwent successful treatment. She learned in September 2018 that the cancer had returned and was told she had a year to live.

“I’ve spent more time in sterile hospital rooms in the past year than I have in my own apartment,” she wrote in a column for Bon Appetit at the time. “This has become my new home, and the staff a part of my family. I wonder if I’ll accidentally call my nurse ‘Mom’ when she sneaks in to check my vital signs in the middle of the night. My blood pressure always stays on the low side of calm. Everyone’s amazed that I’m taking it so well. But when you hit rock bottom, there really is no place to go but up.”

She added, “An odd sense of relief has settled inside me, knowing that I can finally live for myself, even if it’s just for a few more precious months.”

Ali, who was chosen as the “Fan Favorite” in her season of the cooking competition, wrote when the cancer recurred that she hoped to spend the time she had left “making reservations at the world’s best restaurants, reaching out to past lovers and friends, and smothering my family, giving them the time that I so selfishly guarded before.”

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