Barry Manilow Gets Candid About His ‘Nightmare’ Cancer Battle

Barry Manilow, 82, is sharing his “nightmare” cancer journey for the first time in an interview with People magazine.

Manilow was diagnosed with stage 1 lung cancer in November and had to undergo a lobectomy to remove the cancer from his lung.

“You just don’t even think about [how fragile life is]. And suddenly, you have lung cancer,” he said." But I’m still here. I’m not all here; there’s part of me that isn’t here — they took out a part of me, and now I’ve got to figure out, ‘What do I do?’” 

Barry revealed that it was a miracle doctors found the cancer, because he didn’t have any symptoms. His hips were bothering him, so a doctor ordered an MRI. When the doctor found out Barry had recently had two rounds of bronchitis, he ordered an MRI for his lungs, too.

“If he hadn’t done that, man... He saved my life, because there’s no symptoms for what I had. I could go on, nothing hurt — but they found the dot in my lung,” Manilow recalled. “They called me and said, ‘Could be cancer.’ That’s a bad word. ‘Not me. F**k you. I can’t have cancer.’”

The singer added, “They don’t even know how long I had this thing sitting on me. It could have been years. If it had gone any further, then I would be up sh*t’s creek. It just so happened that it hadn’t spread, and boy, oh boy, I thought I might be dying.”

He underwent a successful lobectomy, which required a week in the ICU.

“I don’t remember it, thank goodness, because it was a nightmare,” Manilow said. “I’m one of the lucky ones; I don’t have to have chemo, radiation and all that stuff.”

Barry shared, “It has really, really made me take stock of my life. This made me stop and think about: Have I done what I wanted to do, and have I made people happy? Have I been a good friend? All of those cornball things that I’ve read for all of my life, I started to think about that, too. It really did stop me in my tracks,” he said. “And the answers are yes. And as a matter of fact, there are more yeses than I ever thought.”

“This really rocked me,” he admitted, adding, “but I’m getting stronger.”

The music legend is still recovering from surgery, which People says removed his left lung’s two lobes, which deliver oxygen to the bloodstream.

As for now, the magazine reports Manilow is planning to resume his farewell arena tour, which was pushed back due to the cancer diagnosis.