Onetime Journey frontman Steve Perry has revealed that he recently was diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer, and that he has undergone two surgeries to remove the cancer cells.
"They think they got it all," wrote the "Don't Stop Believin'" singer, who fronted Journey from 1977-87 and 1995-98, on his Fan Asylum personal blog last Thursday.
Perry, who included with the post a photo of himself and former MTV DJ Martha Quinn taken after the surgery (Quinn also tweeted a similar photo, below), said that the diagnosis came after a "routine mole" was removed from his face.
He said he believed "no other treatments were required."
But there was a second, more tragic aspect to the birthday post he sent to his fans.
Perry, 64, wrote of how he fell for a woman named Kellie Nash after seeing her during a 2011 edit session of Lifetime's breast cancer special "Five." Nash a psychologist who was undergoing cancer treatment, caught his eye with her smile and he asked his friend if she could connect the two of them.
But his friend warned Perry that Nash might not have long to live; she was in Stage 4 of the cancer. He emailed her anyway, and the two became a couple. "I never felt like this before," he wrote. "I had finally found her."
Nash died of her cancer in December 2012. "She helped me in so many ways," wrote Perry.
"She was so strong, so courageous and we really loved each other so very much," he wrote. "I've been trying to grieve and not run from this loss so for the last 5 months that's what I've been doing along with recalling everything being in Love with Kellie taught me."
