Shania Twain wants to be there for Celine Dion as she battles with stiff-person syndrome.
“I hope to be able to connect with her at some point,” Twain, 57, said in an interview with Billboard published on Thursday, August 10. “I think it’s gotta be so difficult, and I know — only speaking from my experience — how horrifying it is to think that something is preventing you from singing, or interfering with that joy in your life. So I just pray that she is able to overcome it and she will be up there [on stage] singing for us all again.”
Twain confessed she was “such a fan” of Dion, 55. “She’s a one-of-a-kind, extraordinary vocalist and entertainer,” she gushed.
In December 2022, Dion revealed she was suffering from the “rare condition” of stiff-person syndrome. According to Mayo Clinic, “stiff-man syndrome” — also known as “Moersch-Woltman syndrome” — “is a rare disorder of motor function characterized by involuntary stiffness of axial muscles and superimposed painful muscle spasms, which are often induced by startle or emotional stimuli.”
Five months later, Dion canceled her Courage World Tour and all tickets purchased would be refunded.
“It’s not fair to you to keep postponing the shows, and even though it breaks my heart, it’s best that we cancel everything now until I’m really ready to be back on stage again,” she penned via Instagram in May. “I want you all to know, I’m not giving up … and I can’t wait to see you again!”
While Twain doesn’t suffer from the same ailment as Dion, she sympathizes with the “My Heart Will Go On” singer. Twain has battled Lyme disease throughout the course of her career after getting bit by a tick while horseback riding in 2003.
Lyme disease is “an illness caused by borrelia bacteria. Humans usually get Lyme disease from the bite of a tick carrying the bacteria,” per the Mayo Clinic.
“My symptoms were quite scary because before I was diagnosed, I was on stage very dizzy,” she recalled in her 2022 Netflix documentary, Shania Twain: Not Just a Girl. “I was losing my balance. I was afraid I was gonna fall off the stage, and the stage is quite high.”
In addition to the dizzy spells she faced, Twain confessed the disease also altered her singing voice. In 2011, she had open-throat surgery to fix the nerve damage in her vocal cords.
“My voice was never the same again,” she said in the documentary. “I didn’t understand it.”
