Fans have been concerned about the health of country legend Dolly Parton ever since her husband died, and Parton, 79, revealed she's having health issues of her own.
Now, Miley Cyrus, who is close to Parton, has given an update to Entertainment Tonight. ET's reporter asked Cyrus for an update on Parton, who is her godmother, since Parton cancelled some appearances.
Cyrus's response was optimistic.
“She’s always going to keep the show going. The show must go on. So she’s just excited to get back to work,” Cyrus said to ET.
Parton has remained upbeat amid the health challenges. "I ain’t dead yet!" she wrote on Instagram in October, alongside a video that also gave an update on her health.
"I know lately, everyone thinks that I am sicker than I am. Do I look sick to you?" Parton said in the video. "I wanted to put everyone's mind at ease." She said that she appreciates that fans "seem real concerned."
"And I appreciate your prayers because I'm a person of faith. I can always use the prayers for anything and everything," Parton said in the video. "I want you to know that I'm okay. I've got some problems as I mentioned. Back when my husband Carl was sick, that was for a long time."
Parton added: "And when he passed, I didn’t take care of myself. So I let a lot of things go that I should have been taking care of. So anyway, when I got around to it, the doctors said we need to take care of this; we need to take care of that. So nothing major."
She continued, "But, I did have to cancel some things, so I can be closer to home, closer to Vanderbilt, where I’m kind of having a few treatments here and there. But I wanted you to know that I’m not dying."
In the interview with ET in December, Cyrus also spoke about her new song for the upcoming sequel to the movie, Avatar. She said she saw the unfinished movie as it was being created.“For me, what I love about James Cameron’s work, is even though he can make something this large of scale, he never loses the heart.”