Bruce Springsteen had generous, loving words for the many doctors and nurses who have helped his wife and E Street Band bandmate Patti Scialfa while sharing that the singer is in remission from multiple myeloma at this weekend’s gala for the Pan-Mass Challenge bike race supporting cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
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“We’re a little late, but here we are and it’s a pleasure to be with you,” Springsteen said in an 8-minute prerecorded video, joking about how PMC founder and chairman Billy Starr first invited him to ride in the annual event way back in 1984. As he strummed an acoustic guitar from inside his home studio in New Jersey, Springsteen added, “Since 1980, you have inspired a community that has done something remarkable. You’ve never stopped believing that ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference. And because of that countless lives have been saved.”
Springsteen then made it personal, revealing to the room that Scialfa — who he’s been married to since 1991 and has three grown children with — has been getting treatment at Dana-Farber for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer in which abnormal plasma cells group out of control.
“As you know, Patti’s been living with her multiple myeloma for over eight years,” Springsteen said in the pre-tape uploaded by a fan. “But now, thankfully, she is in remission.” Scialfa, 73, who was diagnosed in 2018, talked about her diagnosis in their 2024 documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Springsteen, 76, took time to shout out the many healthcare workers and doctors who’ve helped her, and countless others, over the years.
“Like millions of families facing cancer, we’ve learned what every patient learns. Hope has a face,” he said. “It’s our physician who refuses to stop searching and caring. It’s our nurse who sits beside us when we’re scared and always makes our journey a little bit easier.” Praising the team for providing hope and care to all their patients, as well as cutting-edge research, Springsteen couldn’t help but point out that in a time of drastic cost-cutting by the Trump administration, “medical research isn’t an idea, it isn’t politics, it isn’t a line in a budget. It’s the reason families find hope when hope seems hardest to find. When we lose sight of that, we lose sight of one another, and that’s too high a price for anyone to pay.”
Springsteen noted that he’s spent the better part of half a century writing songs about people who “keep believing” even when life gives them every reason to give up, as well as about people who refuse to leave someone else behind. “That’s always been the best of America to Patti and I,” he said. “Now, more than ever, the world needs more everyday heroes like the folks who make up the PMC.”
In the 2024 doc, Scialfa said the treatments affected her immune system and made her more deliberate about where she goes and what she does, noting that every once in a while she’s up for performing a few songs at a show, a new normal for her in a band known for playing epic-length gigs and touring the world.
After thanking the team again, the Boss played an unplugged version of what he called “one of my best riding songs,” before busting into a an acoustic “Born to Run.” Springsteen and the E Street Band wrapped up their summer 2026 Land of Hope and Dreams American tour on May 30 with a show In Philadelphia.
