Shania Twain has a Netflix documentary that just premiered on Tuesday. It’s called Shania Twain: Not Just a Girl. Shania has had a huge career, but she’s also had a tumultuous personal life. Most people focus on her divorce to Mutt Lange, who had an affair with Shania’s best friend. Then Shania married that best friend’s ex-husband. It was all just so dishy. A lot of folks assume that’s why Shania pulled back from the spotlight for a few years. But what we are finding out now is that that was part of it, but Shania was also going through some health issues. She told us in 2011 that she’d had dysphonia that affects the vocal cords. In 2018 Shania told fans she’d suffered from Lyme disease and it, too, almost robbed her of her vocal chords. In her new documentary, Shania said the Lyme disease caused dizziness so bad she worried she was going to blackout and fall off her stage while performing.
Shania Twain revealed some of her biggest fears after being diagnosed with Lyme disease in the early aughts during her Netflix documentary: Shania Twain: Not Just A Girl, which premiered on the streamer on Tuesday, July 26. She revealed that between bouts of dizziness, she would have small blackouts, and it made her worried as she performed.
The 56-year-old singer was diagnosed with Lyme while on tour behind her 2002 record Up!, and she admitted that the disease really affected her performing abilities in the new documentary. “My symptoms were quite scary because before I was diagnosed I was on stage very dizzy, I was losing my balance,” she explained in the new movie, per Insider. Dizziness is one of the symptoms of later symptoms of Lyme disease, according to the CDC.While also saying that she was worried about how the disease would affect her voice, she also revealed that she frighteningly experienced lapses in memory. “I was afraid I was going to fall off the stage and the stage is quite high. So I was staying far from the edge. I was adjusting what I was doing,” she explained. “I was having these very, very millisecond blackouts, but regularly every minute, or every 30 seconds.”
I’m having flashbacks of dealing with my parents’ denial about their health issues reading this. Even if Shania hadn’t been diagnosed with Lyme yet, dizziness and mini blackouts are enough reason to pull yourself off a stage until it’s sorted. That’s really scary. As she said, those stages are high, she just needed one blackout at the wrong moment to go plummeting down to a broken back. So did she not mention these issues to anyone? It’s possible this suffering in silence was tied to insurance. Those kinds of issues are enough for policies to get cancelled, which would discontinue the tour and she has so many people’s employment weighing on her. I’m not condoning soldiering on. But I don’t think it was just denial on Shania’s part.
I’m glad Shania is speaking up on Lyme disease in general. While it is becoming more accepted, it was scoffed and disbelieved for so long, causing so many people to suffer unnecessarily. Now that we’re hearing the damage it can do, I hope doctors have stopped jumping to the conclusion that it’s in the patients’ heads. That and I would far prefer Shania to shine a light on Lyme than discuss her politics.
Photo credit: Instagram, Getty Images and Avalon Red
It is strange that so many celebrities have Lymes but I have never met a single person with it in my life. Between the Hadids and Avril Lavigne and Justin and now Shania? Those are just off the top of my head.
I know two people who have it. It took one over a year to get diagnosed and I believe the other one took almost three years. Pretty much they had to test for and toss out pretty much every other possibility before they were even tested for it. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s not as well known if that’s the usual path.
@michael i noticed the same, but I think maybe it’s because famous people usually have the money to afford lots and lots of doctors, which one typically needs for the diagnosis of conditions like this. Us plebs might just not get the same medical treatment.
Exactly. I think you are right, @Brainfog. It is also a very time-consuming process to have so many appointments and tests over 1,2,3+ years. It is like having another job. And on top of the exhaustion from Lyme’s. Not easy if you have a typical day job and responsibilities.
It may be a regional thing – I live in New England and probably half the people I know have had Lyme, including at least five close friends, possibly because of the tick population here. It can be absolutely debilitating – one of my friends had to stop working and go on disability and 20 years later is still suffering. Joint pain, headaches, crushing fatigue, the list of symptoms goes on and on. When we go out in the woods or even for a walk in a field, tick check after is mandatory. You do NOT want to get this thing. And it’s misdiagnosed or missed a lot of the time.
I’m in western New York state and it happens here often. A coworker was just diagnosed this week. A dear friend of mine in Rhode Island has had it twice, the first time it was at least a year before she got diagnosed
and treatment and she was on disability for a long time after. The second time, she knew exactly what it was and was able to get treated faster. I feel like doctors are a lot more proactive about it now, especially if you know you had a tick.
I loved Shania back in the day. But my gawd. That woman has terrible taste in clothes and is such an odd person.
100% agree. She’s also gone WAY overboard with the cosmetic procedures and barely looks like she used to.
Also- this is a bit of a repeat of a comment below, but her political beliefs and values are beyond problematic.
She looks the same to me, just heavier. She is pushing 60 after all. Are we so conditioned to plastic surgery that ageing naturally looks weird to us now?
Lyme Disease is brutal and so hard to diagnose – but once you’re there and can treat it, whew. See also: Kathleen Hanna.
To @Michael – Lyme Disease is more common in some parts of the country than in others, so that may account for your lack of personal experience?
Terrible judgment about men, including “honest” Trump
I have late stage chronic Lyme disease and I totally understand these neurological symptoms. They are VERY scary. I have had Lyme for about 20 years. The therapies that actually work are very expensive and not covered by insurance so it makes treating it effectively very hard. If you don’t catch Lyme disease right away, it disseminates into the body where it can completely avoid antibiotics. So, if you don’t know what you have or have a doctor who is knowledgable about Lyme symptoms, you could go years without knowing what the root cause of your health issue is.And by that time, antibiotics just don’t work very well. Thats what happened to me. It took 5 years and massive amounts of money and different practitioners to figure it out. Finally I am in good care, but its not cheap and it doesn’t just go away once you have it for long enough. Its an every day battle that requires a very clean diet, a lot of supplements, IV therapies if you can get them, and an overall mindset that you can win. Its tough. I have compassions for all Lyme sufferers. Its complex and oftentimes people think you are a hypochondriac because the symptoms are so vast and intense. Anyway, I truly do hope Shania can shed some light on Lyme. We need more voices out there like hers talking about it.
My sister has it. She contracted it about 25 years ago and it took months to get a diagnosis. It really wrecked her body. In addition to reoccurring Bell’s Palsy, she had short term memory loss and even lost the ability to walk for a few days. She couldn’t even use an epidural when she had to have a c/s with her kids because it just didn’t take. They had to completely knock her out.
IV therapy a couple weeks a year for several years, she’s now in remission.
I love Shania! That’s all I wanted to say.
We’re really gonna cover Trump loving Shania??