Sisy Chen declares herself “cured of cancer”, reveals secret hospital escapades

Veteran Taiwanese media personality Sisy Chen has waged a long battle against cancer, sharing her experiences along the way. Accounts of her close calls have often left fans worried. Recently, however, she lifted their spirits with another post declaring herself cured.

Chen revealed that several blood test reports she had recently received from Boston, US showed that her cancer cell readings had remained below 0.05 for consecutive months, prompting her to “declare myself cured”. She wrote: “Last July, when I stopped immunotherapy, I took a leaf out of some election candidates’ books and ‘declared myself cured’. This year, it has actually come true.”

Recalling her cancer treatment, she described a hospital room piled high with chocolates, yokan sweets made for Japan’s imperial household and ice cream. She even once sneaked out late at night to buy Hong Kong-style desserts, determined to live on her own terms.

Sisy Chen confirmed in 2024 that she had stage four malignant melanoma. After more than a year of cancer treatment, she was finally discharged from hospital in July this year. Reflecting on the difficult days she spent bedridden, she said she missed the version of herself who faced serious illness without sadness, remained calm and always wore a smile. With a laugh, she recalled how her hospital room always held dozens of boxes of chocolates and yokan sweets made for Japan’s imperial household, as well as more than ten tubs of ice cream. She even refused to take her medicine with just plain water: “That would be too hard on my stomach — and my feelings.”

She said she initially took her medicine with frozen yoghurt, switching to reduced-sugar matcha ice cream when she got tired of it. Its oat base also helped eased her stomach. Later, low protein and haemoglobin levels led her doctor to conclude that she was malnourished, so she arranged for a hotel to prepare a pot of chicken soup each week to accompany her medicine. As for advice that cancer patients should not eat sashimi, she said bluntly that she “couldn’t possibly give up my favourite food”, adding that she followed only 90% of what her doctors told her.

On another occasion, at 11pm, she found a Hong Kong-style dessert shop online and sneaked out of hospital to buy a large box of treats, including ginger milk pudding and other milk puddings. By the time she returned, the main entrance was shut, so she had to put on an N95 mask and slip back into the building through the emergency department. Once back in her room, she did not forget to “buy the silence” of the nurses at the nursing station, sharing the desserts with them.

Chen said she particularly missed how deeply she felt things then, and how grateful she was to the world. Seeing volunteers at the cancer hospital would move her to tears as she thought about how they might have lost family members yet still served other patients with empathy. Despite her own serious illness, she remained full of vitality, enthusiastically filling each day with life and sweetness.

She also adapted lines by the poet Li Bai into a light-hearted verse to encourage herself: “When life goes well, enjoy it to the full; let not the golden goblet stand empty beneath the moon. So what if illness is my lot? Rosy lips and smiles will return.”

She had declared herself cured after stopping immunotherapy in July last year. Now that good news has truly arrived, she is also clear that the chronic conditions left by treatment continue to cause her considerable suffering. Simply “becoming an ordinary person who can walk slowly and eat independently” has taken all her strength.

She also vowed to keep seeking meaning in life. Since recently returning from Hangzhou in mainland China, she has put the past behind her and embarked on a new chapter. Defiant about the risk of recurrence, she said: “Nonsense! Who cares about an 80 to 90% recurrence rate within two years? I’m alive, and that means living. Don’t spend your life thinking about death. Leave that until you’re dead. Haha!”

She ended on a playful note: “I miss that lovely old girl I used to be.”