I don’t have a great deal of Country Music know how, but I knew the name Ashley Monroe from her many collabs with people like Jack White and Blake Shelton.
Now the singer, 34, has announced she has a rare form of blood cancer called Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia and will start chemotherapy treatments Wednesday.
“A few months ago my dr. was doing some routine lab work and found that I was anemic,” she wrote. “I was like, FINE, I’ll just double up on cheeseburger patties , take some extra vitamins and call it a day. Well my red blood count just kept falling, and they found out my iron /b12/ folic acid numbers were actually fine. short story long, they did a bone marrow biopsy, (ouch) , and VOILA.. a rare kind of blood c word called ‘waldenstrom macroglobulinemia’ It’s causing my body to be pretty severely anemic, and I feel it.”
Ashley lost her father to cancer when she was just 13 and said it was writing music that helped her cope with the devastating loss.
The American Cancer Society defines Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia (WM) as a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in which “cancer cells make large amounts of an abnormal protein.” Another name for WM is lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma.