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Carly Simon has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
The 83-year-old singer-songwriter, best known for her 1972 hit “You’re So Vain,” revealed the news on Monday in a statement (viaPeople). “So many people have written
to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing. The truth is, I’ve been learning how to live with Parkinson’s disease,” Simon said.
“It has taken me some time to understand the diagnosis, to adjust to it, and to decide how much I wanted to say about it publicly,” she continued. “Parkinson’s is different for everyone, and it can be unpredictable. Some days I’m so tired I can’t get the day moving at all. On others, it gives me a little more room to move, think, work, and feel like myself.”
Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder that effects nerve cells in the brain, does not currently have a cure. Symptoms include tremors, stiffness, difficulty balancing and slowness of movement. Simon said that she was diagnosed after her mobility continued to worsen following replacement surgeries on her knees and one hip.
“Eventually, there were periods when I could not walk without considerable help,” she wrote. “My family and I knew that something more was going on. After an extensive evaluation at the Mayo Clinic, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.”
Though Simon has been affected physically, she has also struggled with “anxiety, depression, exhaustion and apathy” after her diagnosis. “That has been one of the hardest things to explain,” she said. “It is not simply sadness or laziness. It is as though the part of the brain that sends out invitations to participate in life has temporarily misplaced the guest list.”
In addition to Parkinson’s, Simon also revealed that she was previously diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer, and underwent surgery for it.
“The cancer was removed, but the surgery affected my appearance and made me more self-conscious about being seen in public,” Simon said. “I have always been more critical of my appearance than anyone else could possibly imagine (check out the irony of having written ‘You’re So Vain’), and this gave my inner critic quite a lot of new material.”
Simon concluded that despite her health struggles, she has “not stopped living” and “not stopped working.” In fact, she has been working on a new album, “Comes in Waves.”
“Music has always known when to arrive. It has rescued me more times that I can count. It is like a cat or dog that quietly appears beside you when it senses you are not quite yourself,” she said. “The album includes songs and fragments of songs that had been waiting for me, some for years. There were melodies, verses, and ideas written down and tucked away for some unknown future when I would have the time and attention to finish them. Apparently, that future is now.”
