Grammy-Winning Singer Opens up About Emergency Double Lung Transplant After Being Given One Week to Live
· Vice
It’s been less than a year since Grammy-winning R&B singer Muni Long was forced to undergo an emergency double lung transplant. Now, she’s opening up about the terrifying ordeal and how doctors initially gave her one week to live.
In a June 23, 2026, interview on Good Morning America, Long discussed her health crisis, which arose as she was traveling as an opening act for Brandy and Monica on the 2025 “The Boy Is Mine” tour.
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“I should have never taken that tour, but there was so much going on in my life that I had to do it,” explained Long. Her reason? Long has been living with Lupus, an autoimmune disease, for many years, and it can lead to other serious issues.
Muni Long has two Grammy awards and has written songs for numerous pop and country artists
“About midway through, we’re up in the northeast, it’s really cold, and with autoimmune, the cold is really not your friend,” she went on to share. “I got really sick, I got pneumonia. I had to step away for a few dates. But I’m like, ‘This is not it, I got to go back.'”
Not one to disappoint the fans, Long chose to return to the musical trek. “I went back, and I think maybe about five or six dates in, I was like, this is not [it],” she said. “I couldn’t even get out of bed to make my call time for the stage. And the last show, I just barely made it. I was only able to do two songs. My team and my family were like, you just need to come home and rest.”
After taking medicine to get through the tour, Long made it home for Thanksgiving, but the peace was short-lived. She says that one day she woke up in the hospital to doctors urging her to have a life-saving surgery.
“[The doctors] were all like, you need a [lung] transplant,” Long recalled. “I’m like, ‘It sounds like you have a time. How long do I have to live?’ And they go, ‘A week.’ One week. And my jaw dropped literally. I was like, ‘That’s rude.’ But they just wanted me to, hey, this is not a joke, you need to make a choice. You can either go to hospice, or you can get these lungs.”
Fast forward several months, and Long has recovered from her lung transplant operation and is doing “fabulous,” but may not be able to perform again for many months more, on her doctor’s orders.
“The ego and the vanity was like, what about my voice? What’s going to happen?” Long shared. “But I look at my son, and I think about how much more life that I have to live. And I think just quality of life was first. I can’t sing if I’m not here.”
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