On Sheryl Crow’s Report that She Has a Meningioma, and Singing Loud
This morning CNN fed a headline: Sheryl Crow: ‘Brain Tumor is a Bump in the Road.’ This concerned me, not only because I’m a huge fan, but because in 2006, she began treatment for breast cancer at age 43. “Singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow says she has a brain tumor,” says the first line of the CNN story. I was concerned. It seemed liked she’d been getting a little bit closer…to feeling fine.
Fortunately, the LATimes and People magazine got Crow’s story right. Their headlines, and text, emphasize the benign nature of Crow’s newly-diagnosed condition, a meningioma. Most meningiomas are benign, local expansions of the cells that line the brain and spinal cord. These growths occasionally cause neurological symptoms. Some patients have surgery to relieve or avoid complications of these non-malignant growths, but many don’t need intervention. When I was an oncology fellow I learned that meningiomas were relatively frequent in women with breast cancer, but that association turned out to be untrue. The “lesson” back then was that if a scan shows a brain mass in a woman with breast cancer, you shouldn’t assume it’s a brain met, because meningiomas were not rare in women with a history of breast cancer. According to the NCI website today, meningiomas are more common in women than in men.
Cancer scares aside – I’m glad that Sheryl Crow’s brain mass is benign, and that she can keep on singing if she chooses. I’ve seen her twice in concert, and she’s amazing. I have several favorite songs of hers, but the most memorable moment from a performance I’ve seen was when she got up on top of the piano at Radio City and sang Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll. I wish I could do that! She’s a powerful woman, for sure.
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