The country legend has canceled her Las Vegas residency, but she’s responding well to treatment, still writing, and as quotable as ever.
Dolly Parton has a way of making bad news sound like a story worth sticking around for.
The “Queen of Kindness” recently posted a short video to Instagram and told her fans she had “some good news, and a little bad news.” The good news, she said, is that she’s responding really well to her medications and treatments, and improving every day. The bad news is that it will be a while before she’s back on a stage. The treatments leave her a little “swimmy-headed,” she said, borrowing one of her grandmother’s words.
Parton, 80, went on to compare herself to an old classic car that, once restored, can be better than ever.
“When they raised the hood on this old antique, they realized that I need to rebuild my engine,” she said, “and that my transmission is slipping, my oil pan is leaking and my muffler’s busted and my shocks and pistons need to be replaced.”
She offered some specifics. Kidney stones, an old foe, are part of the story. “Lord, they dig more stones out of me a year than the rock quarry in Rockwood, Tennessee,” she joked. More seriously, her immune and digestive systems have been, in her words, “out of whack” for the past two or three years, and her doctors are working on rebuilding both. They have also told her, she said, that everything she is dealing with is treatable.
The update did come with one piece of disappointing news for ticket holders. Parton’s long-awaited Las Vegas residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, “Dolly: Live in Las Vegas,” has now been canceled outright. It was originally scheduled for December 2025, then pushed to September of this year, before being scrapped. “On a more serious note, I’m truly sorry that I’m going to miss all of you that had tickets to see me in Las Vegas,” she said.
She isn’t slowing down, though. Parton confirmed she is still working on her museum and hotel in Nashville, both expected to open this year, along with her Broadway musical, “Dolly: A True Original Musical,” set to debut in New York later in 2026. She is still recording. She is still making videos. And she is, by her own admission, still running up to Dollywood now and again.
“I know you’re thinking, ‘Lord, sick or well, that girl’s always promoting something,'” she said. “Well, that’s true, but that’s how you get it done.”
The video also landed on a heavy day for other reasons. Parton lost her husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Thomas Dean, in March 2025. In interviews since, she has talked about how grief took a physical toll, and how she let some of her own health concerns slide while caring for him. The fact that she chose to face the camera anyway, with her usual mix of self-deprecation and gratitude, says a lot about how she is wired.
For fans who have grown up with her voice on the radio, her books in their children’s hands, and her face on a thousand magazine covers, the message was simple enough. Dolly is responding to treatment. Dolly is still writing. Dolly, as she put it back in October, is not ready to die yet.
The classic car might be in the shop, but by every available account, it’s still working 9 to 5 and will be back on the road soon.
