Glastonbury 2008: Winehouse may still play, despite emphysema
Amy Winehouse has been diagnosed with early stage emphysema, according to an interview with her father this weekend. And unless she is able to transform her lifestyle, doctors say she'll have to wear an oxygen mask.
"She's got emphysema. It's in its early stages, but had it gone on for another month they painted a very vivid picture of her sitting there like an old person with [an oxygen] mask on her face struggling to breathe," her father Mitch Winehouse told the Sunday Mirror.
"It's been a tough week," he said.
Winehouse was admitted to The London Clinic in Marylebone on Monday, June 16 after fainting during "admin work" at home. "Amy's now had every scan in the book - for her brain, on her lungs, her heart," Mitch said. "She's having tests every day to monitor her heart rate. When she went into hospital she had irregular heartbeats. I was messing around and picked up a stethoscope and listened to her chest myself. It was all over the place. But they've now sorted that out with medication."
A lump was found in Amy's chest, her father said, but a scan has shown that it is not cancerous and there are no traces of cancer in her blood.
It's the emphysema that has more serious long-term consequences. "With smoking the crack cocaine and the cigarettes her lungs are all gunked up," Mitch explained. "There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She's got 70% lung capacity." In order to fight the chronic lung condition, the singer will have to leave the narcotic fog that has continued to suffuse her social life. "I'm saying to those drug dealers, and they know who they are, if they are supplying crack to Amy, then they've got to take responsibility," her father said. "I don't want her hanging out with her mates like Pete Doherty either."
Meanwhile, Amy's husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, is calling his wife every day to "help her stay strong", Mitch said. Fielder-Civil is, of course, not the most stable of supporters, and currently awaits sentencing for grievous bodily harm and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
"Blake apologised to me for getting Amy into drugs and says he's going to try and put it right," her father said.
But it's music, not love, that Mitch Winehouse hopes will be able to save his daughter. "If she hadn't done recent shows in Moscow and Portugal she could have been dead by now. She abstains and regulates her drug use when she has to do a show. When she's been inactive work-wise then that's when the problems really start. The doctors have said that medically there isn't any reason why she can't do Glastonbury."
The singer is also scheduled to perform at Nelson Mandela's birthday concert in Hyde Park, on June 27.
Original Source : http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2287034,00.html
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