'Top Chef' Fan Favorite Fatima Ali Dead At 29 After Battle With Rare 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."
Ali made it to the ninth episode of her "Top Chef" season, which debuted in December of 2017, before being eliminated. She won the hearts of fans of the Bravo reality cooking competition show though, scoring that installment's Fan Favorite vote.