Larger-than-life reality TV star Angela ‘Big Ang’ Raiola’s health took a
turn for the worse Wednesday after a year-long battle with stage 4
brain and lung cancer, according to relatives.
Family and friends of the 55-year-old “Mob Wives” matriarch streamed
into a local hospital to be by the Brooklyn-born bar owner’s side after
she stopped receiving cancer treatments. A source said she was suffering
from pneumonia.
Loved ones denied earlier reports of her death.
“Ang is hanging in there,” a relative told the Daily News outside the
hospital late Wednesday. “She’s strong. We’re hoping for the best.”
“She’s upstairs,” a relative told the Daily News outside the area
medical center late Wednesday. “She’s still with us. She’s fighting.”
A representative for Raiola sent out a statement from her Twitter feed
around 10 p.m. Wednesday saying that she was “still in the hospital
surrounded by her loved ones, and is fighting.”
A source told the Daily News earlier that she had been given last rites
and that her family was holding vigil by her side late Wednesday.
“At this time that is a false rumor,” “Mob Wives” creator Jennifer
Graziano said in a statement. “I am here with the entire family and all
her friends and they ask for your continued support and prayers. We will keep everyone updated.”
Raiola, the niece of reputed captain of the Genovese crime family, was
diagnosed last year with throat cancer and underwent several surgeries
before being given the all clear.
The disease returned in December and had spread to her brain and lungs, according to reports.
“Sometimes I feel I’m gonna be fine, and sometimes I just don't think I
am,” Raiola said in a tearful interview on “The Dr. Oz Show” that aired
Tuesday.
Raiola revealed that she had left her husband, Neil Murphy, and that she was given a 30% chance of survival.
Murphy was seen at the hospital Wednesday night, but declined to comment.
Raiola, a lifelong smoker, underwent chemotherapy, but the treatment
didn’t work, and she had begun immunotherapy, which uses the body’s
immune system rather than chemicals to fight diseases.
Raiola told the Daily News last year that she stopped smoking immediately after her first cancer diagnosis last March.
Her doctors told her the disease was “positively” caused by smoking,
she said, and she called for people to quit the habit or resist picking
it up.
Raiola gave fans a look into her cancer battle on an episode of “Mob Wives,” which is in its final season, earlier this month.
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