Associated Press
Nashville, Tennessee – Country music Rosanne Cash is facing brain surgery for a rare but benign condition and must cancel the last four dates on her “Black Cadillac” tour.
The announcement was made Tuesday by Manhattan Records, the 52-year-old singer’s music label. Cash is expected to make a full recovery and resume recording and touring next spring.
“She does want everyone to know that it’s a benign condition, and it’s not life-threatening,” said her manager, Danny Kahn. “It’s nothing like a tumor or hemorrhage or anything. It’s elective surgery.”
Kahn said Cash has been diagnosed with chiari I malformation.
According to the American Syringomyelia Alliance Project, a nonprofit clearinghouse for information about chiari and related disorders, the disorder is a congenital malformation of the skull that affects the brain and spinal cord.
Symptoms, which include severe head and neck pain worsened by coughing, sneezing or straining, often don’t show up until adulthood, the organization said.
“She’s somehow accepted many of them through the course of her own life, the sort of discomforts that you learn to live with,” Kahn said. “She’s noticed them more over the course of this last year.”
Cash, who lives in New York City, will have the surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital, her record label said.
Cash is the daughter of the late country star Johnny Cash. Her hits include the crossover “Seven Year Ache” and “The Way We Make a Broken Heart.” She signed with EMI-based Manhattan Records earlier this year.
She has been touring in support of her latest album, “Black Cadillac.”
Her career was interrupted for more than two years by vocal cord polyps, but she recovered and resumed recording.
Cash has written a book of short stories and collaborated on a children’s book.
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