Monday 30 June 2008

Winehouse has 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 be wheezing into an oxygen mask instead of a microphone.

"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.


See Also

Sunday 15 June 2008

Korn, Mudvayne, Others Named In Lawsuit Filed By Fan Over Injuries Suffered At Concert




Korn, Mudvayne, Clear Channel Broadcasting and national concert promoter Live Nation have been named in a lawsuit filed earlier this year in Denver District Court by a 27-year-old waitress who was injured during a concert that took place March 8, 2006.

The woman claims several rowdy concertgoers knocked her to the ground and trampled her as they made their way toward the stage. The University of Denver, which was the site for the KBPI-FM "Birthday Bash" concert, is also named as a defendant in the suit.

According to a Rocky Mountain News report, the show was Nicole LaScalia's first concert experience. She ended up leaving the event in an ambulance after one of her legs was crushed by the weight of the crowd. She is seeking unspecified damages, and her case is likely to proceed slowly, to allow time for the numerous parties involved to respond to its claims.

The report says LaScalia underwent surgery to fix a fractured tibia and fibula, as well as her badly injured ankle. She has accrued about $60,000 in medical bills, and the suit will seek damages for "severe pain and suffering."

According to the suit, LaScalia fell to the ground when several fans surged toward the stage just as Mudvayne began their performance. "Something like this is reasonably foreseeable," LaScalia's lawyer, Darrell Elliott, told the paper. "There has to be sufficient supervision if you have festival seating to protect patrons. In this case, it didn't happen. Oversight was lacking."

Meanwhile, Clear Channel has responded to the suit, calling the victim's claims "frivolous and groundless." The company blamed the injuries on either her negligence or the actions of those in the crowd.

At press time, Elliott and representatives for Korn and Mudvayne had not responded to MTV News' requests for comment.






See Also

Tuesday 3 June 2008

Grammys set a date

51st annual awards ceremony will be Feb. 8 in L.A.





The 51st annual Grammy Awards will be held Sunday, Feb. 8, 2009, at Staples Center in Los Angeles and will be broadcast live to the East Coast by CBS.
"The next 50 are here, and we are delighted to be in our hometown," Recording Academy president and CEO Neil Portnow said.
The show is expected to run from 8 p.m.-11:30 p.m., according to the network, and will be showed on a delay to the West Coast.
Nominations will be announced Dec. 4.
Ratings for the Grammys have slipped in recent years; the awards show averaged 18.2 million this year, compared with 20 million in 2007.