Bruce Springsteen’s wife, Patti Scialfa, has announced that she has been struggling with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma for the past six years. Scialfa, a guitarist with Springsteen’s E Street Band, has withdrawn from her husband’s latest tour, saying it negatively impacted her health and had become too much of a challenge. “This affects my immune system, so I just have to be careful what I choose to do and where I choose to go,” she said.
The guitarist added that she still likes attending the odd concert and singing a song or two, but that is enough for her now. Scialfa joined the E Street Band in 1984 and married Springsteen seven years later. The couple, both New Jersey natives, have three children together.
Despite growing up in the same area at the same time, they did not meet until bumping into each other at a bar in 1980, when they developed a friendship around their shared love of music. They welcomed their first grandchild in 2022, just before superstar Springsteen launched another world tour and opened up about his own health struggles throughout his long career. The singer described suffering from significant periods of depression, adding that his wife was his primary source of support.
Describing his relationship with Patti, he said they have kept their working and personal relationships strictly separate throughout the decades they’ve performed together. Springsteen explained that when they are on stage, they are bandmates, and when they walk off stage, they become husband and wife again.
Seventy-one-year-old Scialfa told reporters that she received the cancer diagnosis in 2018, but a spokesperson later stated that no further details would be provided. Experts describe multiple myeloma as a cancer of the body’s plasma cells – a white blood cell whose role is to produce antibodies. The causes of the disease are not understood, but risk factors include exposure to chemicals or radiation, obesity, and family history. There are roughly 36,000 multiple myeloma diagnoses in the US every year, and around 13,000 deaths. It affects more men than women by approximately a quarter.
