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Dolly Parton offered an update on her “health issues” after she missed a recent event at Dollywood in East Tennessee.
Parton, 80, had to miss an event to celebrate the opening of a new ride at her Pigeon Forge theme park, NightFlight Expedition, on Friday (August 14). The attraction is officially open to the general public beginning Wednesday (August 19). Parton said in a video-recorded message to those in attendance, “I’m still in Nashville, and I’m sorry about that. I was supposed to be there in person like we planned.” An event attendee shared a look at Parton's message on TikTok.
“I’ve told you before, all my fans, that I’ve had a few little health issues and sometimes I get a little dizzy and I get dehydrated. And I’m dehydrated,” Parton, who appeared with butterfly wings in the video, continued in her message. “So my Nashville doctor has kind of clipped my wings, saying, ‘You ain’t traveling this week.’ So I guess if your doctor tells you, ‘You ain’t traveling this week,’ you ain’t traveling this week. But I like to keep all of you in the loop, like I said I would, on everything. So, all is going well on the medical end of things. And I continue working away on all of our other projects, like the SongTeller Hotel and my Life of Many Colors Museum here in Nashville, and the Broadway musical in New York, and that is taking a lot of time. …You have fun, and I will see you down the road.”
Parton has previously dropped out of events — including canceling her Las Vegas residency, which had already been postponed — because of her “health issued.” She first opened up about her health in September 2025, explaining that she’d “had a little problem,” with a kidney stone that had “given me an infection. …Don’t worry about me. I’m gonna be OK.” Parton reiterated after rumors spread online, “I’m OK. …I figured if you heard it from me, you’d know that I was OK.”
“The good news is I’m responding really well to meds and treatments, and I’m improving every day,” Parton said in an update earlier this year, going on to explain why she’d canceled her Vegas residency. “Now, the bad news is, it’s gonna take me a little while before I’m up to stage-performance level, because some of the meds and treatments make me a little bit ‘swimmy-headed,’ as my grandma used to say. And of course, I can’t be dizzy carrying around banjos, guitars, and such on five-inch heels, and you know that I’m going to be wearing them. not to mention all those heavy rhinestone outfits, the big hair, my big, uh, personality. Lord, those — that — would make anybody ‘swimmy-headed.’ …I am truly sorry that I’m going to miss all of you that had tickets to see me in Las Vegas. Well you get on to Vegas and you have a big time, and hopefully sometime you’ll come up to New York and maybe see my show, and I’ll see you somewhere down the line.”