‘I thought I was gonna fall off the stage:’ Shania Twain says Lyme disease caused her to blackout during live shows

‘I was losing my balance, I was afraid I was gonna fall off the stage,’ singer said

Shania Twain has opened up about how Lyme disease caused her to suffer blackouts during her live shows.

In her new Netflix documentary Not Just a Girl, the 56-year-old Canadian singer described the frightening experience of contracting Lyme disease and the extent to which it altered her voice.

“Before I was diagnosed, I was on stage very dizzy,” Twain said. “I was losing my balance, I was afraid I was gonna fall off the stage.

“I was having these very, very, very millisecond blackouts, but regularly, every minute or every 30 seconds.”

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that can be spread to humans by infected ticks. Symptoms can include headaches, tiredness, muscle and joint pain and loss of energy.

The “Any Man of Mine” singer also revealed that she developed dysphonia due to the chronic illness, which caused her to temporarily lose her voice.

“My voice was never the same again,” she said. “I thought I’d lost my voice forever. I thought that was it, [and] I would never, ever sing again.”

(Getty Images for ZFF)

Twain reportedly underwent multiple invasive surgeries following the loss of her voice.

In a 2019 interview with Extra, Twain revealed that she had “an operation that was very intense and it’s an open-throat operation, very different from a vocal cord operation.

“I had to have two of them, so that was really, really, really tough and I survived that – meaning emotionally I survived – and am just ready to keep going.”

Twain isn’t the only celebrity to have been diagnosed with Lyme disease.

In 2020, Justin Bieber also underwent treatment for the disease.

Other famous figures to have suffered from the infection include actor Alec Baldwin, model Bella Hadid and singer Avril Lavigne.

In 2015, Lavigne revealed she had been battling the condition for a year and said she was bedridden for five months.

Ticks with Lyme disease can be found across the UK, but are most prevalent in grassy, wooded areas. They are most active between March and October.

Here’s everything you need to know about Lyme disease.