Fatima Ali, ‘Top Chef’ contestant from Colorado season, dies at 29 from cancer
Fatima Ali, who was voted “Fan Favorite” on Season 15 of “Top Chef,” lost her battle with a rare bone and soft tissue cancer Friday.
She was just 29.
Ali revealed back in October in a personal essay for Bon Appetit that her cancer had returned. She had been suffering from Ewing’s sarcoma since 2017.
“The cancer cells my doctors believed had vanished are back with a vengeance in my left hip and femur bone,” she wrote. “My oncologist has told me that I have a year to live, with or without the new chemotherapy regimen. I was looking forward to being 30, flirty, and thriving. Guess I have to step it up on the flirting. I have no time to lose.”
Ali documented her journey on social media, with her last Instagram post being a Jan. 10 smiling photo from her hospital bed in which she asked for prayers.
“I’m sick and unfortunately I’m getting sicker,” she wrote. “Right now all I need are prayers; prayers that are simple. I hope, because a wish is putting on too much responsibility on the other, that you will somehow find forgiveness in your big heart for whenever I must have hurt you. I thank you a million times over for when you have given me joy.”