Halsey revealed on Tuesday that has been privately battling chronic illnesses.
The singer shared her personal health news in a social media post, which was tied to the release of “The End,” a song on her upcoming fifth studio album.
Halsey, whose real name is Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, did not explicitly confirm her diagnoses. However, she tagged the accounts for Lupus Research Alliance, a nonprofit funding lupus research, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, a nonprofit funding blood cancer research, in her Instagram post.
Lupus is is a chronic autoimmune disease that can damage the skin, joints, organs or other parts of the body, according to the Lupus Foundation of America. Leukemia and lymphoma are types of cancer that can affect blood cells and the immune system.
“long story short, i’m Lucky to be alive. short story long, i wrote an album,” Halsey wrote in the Instagram caption.
A representative for the singer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The social media post consisted of videos documenting moments in Halsey’s health journey, including what appears to be footage of her receiving infusions at a hospital and a clip of her recording “The End” while strumming a guitar.
“I feel like an old lady,” Halsey, 29, is seen saying in the first video, while rubbing her calves and groaning in apparent discomfort. “I told myself I’m giving myself two more years to be sick… [When] I’m 30, I’m having a rebirth and I’m not gonna be sick and I’m gonna look super hot and have lots of energy, and I’m just gonna get to re-do my 20s in my 30s.”
Her new song appears to allude to the more personal details of her experience with chronic illness, opening with the verse: “Every couple of years now, a doctor says I’m sick / Pulls out a brand new bag of tricks / And then they lay it on me / And at first, it was my brain, then a skeleton in pain.”
“When I met you, I said I would never die / But the joke was always mine ‘cause I’m racing against time,” she sings in the acoustic ballad. “And I know it’s not the end of the world, but could you pick me up at 8? / ‘Cause my treatment starts today.”
This isn’t the first time the pop star has opened up about her health struggles online. In 2022, Halsey had reportedly shared on her Instagram stories that she became “really, really, really sick” after giving birth the year prior.
“I was hospitalized for anaphylaxis a few times and had some other stuff going on,” she wrote at the time. “Basically, after seeing a like 100,000 doctors, I got diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Sjogren’s syndrome, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), [and] Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS).”
