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Aretha Franklin was “gravely ill” as of Sunday night (August 12), according to a new report. The Queen of Soul was in Detroit surrounded my friends and family preparing for her death, Showbiz 411 reported.
The latest reports came just about nine months after other reports of her failing health circulated online before they were debunked in late November.
The 76-year-old legendary singer has been dogged by rumors of cancer since at least 2011, when she told Jet exclusively that doctors advised her to cancel all concerts until May because of her health.
“I am not one to do a lot of talking about my personal health or business,” she said at the time. “Not too much, not too much. There are a lot of people who will talk about anything, as long as there is somebody listening. But I am not one of those people. That’s not Aretha.”
She continued:
“I am not going to even deal with that. “I don’t have to talk about my health with anybody other than my doctors. The problem has been resolved.”
The National Enquirer published reports in May 2017 of Franklin having lost more than 100 pounds because of a “cancer relapse,” an anonymous source told the tabloid. “She was due to have radical chemotherapy treatments, and was told by doctors she needed to lose weight if she wanted to survive.”
The following month, she canceled a concert in Toronto scheduled for July because of “doctors orders,” according to the Daily Mail.
Showbiz 411 reported that Franklin was “[o]riginally diagnosed with cancer in 2010.” However, while she admitted in 2011 that she had gone “through a number of procedures,” Franklin told Access Hollywood that “I don’t know where ‘pancreatic cancer’ [reports] came from.”
Franklin had “highly successful” surgery in 2010, though she never addressed the details of the procedure that forced her to cancel a series of scheduled concerts at the time.
Soul Music Legend Aretha Franklin Is Reportedly Near Death was originally published on newsone.com
