Shania Twain overcame ‘scary’ condition that could have stopped her from singing & ended career

Canadian Country Music star Shania Twain, 58, is a chart-topping and award-winning singer but for a brief time, she almost lost everything she had worked hard for.

Shania, who is performing at Utilita Arena Birmingham today (September 26), overcame a difficult disease and surgery on her throat only to come back on top and take her Queen of Me Tour across the world.

The global music star has been performing since she was eight years old after her parents died in a car crash in 1987. She started working in bars to help raise her siblings.

“I was way too young with way too many responsibilities and I grew up way too fast,” she told the Happy Place with Fearne Cotton podcast.

“As a child, I did not have someone to save me from a lot of things so you learn to find your own strength. I was forced into finding it too young but I have this key and I can unlock my courage deep down there somewhere. I could find reasons now to be in pain but I choose not to in my emotions. It is all about mind over matter.”

So, when the best-selling female artist in country music history contracted Lyme Disease in 2003 after being bit by a tick during horseback riding, she was fearful about her career. Lyme Disease affected her vocal cords causing inflammation.

“My symptoms were quite scary because, before I was diagnosed, I was on stage very dizzy, I was losing my balance, I was afraid I was going to fall off the stage,” Twain recalled. “I was having these very, very millisecond blackouts, but regularly — every minute or every 30 seconds,” she said in the documentary titled Not Just A Girl on Netflix.

She said her voice was “never the same again” after the contracting Lyme Disease. She added: “I thought I’d lost my voice forever. I thought that was it.”

The 58-year-old thought her career was over after the diagnosis. “It was devastating,” she said in a March 2020 interview on Sunday TODAY. “I was very, very sad about it, to the point where ... I felt I had no other choice but to just accept it.”

The Country-pop star has been through several “invasive” surgeries including an open-throat surgery. When she appeared on The Graham Norton Show in February 2023, she said: “The operation was very invasive, and I’ve got a big scar that I am proud of. I’m very happy to have a scar rather than no voice. The surgery was a miracle, and I am so grateful. Going back into a studio after the operation was a discovery and I was re-learning voice. I can get very loud and now I can swear really loudly!”

Shania Twain on body image issues

Shania posed nude in February 2023 to embrace her body after years of insecurities which made her consider going under the knife as well.

According to Mirror, she said: “There were times I did like turning the lights off as all I could see were the imperfections so I said, ‘OK, how can I face this and get this to a point where I accept it?’ So I did a nude photography session to find a more healthy and realistic perspective on myself. I thought, ‘I am just going to force myself through this’.”

She has come a long way from her insecurities now and instead, embraces herself flaws and all. “I say you should look in the mirror and be fine with that. I am only going to get older and saggier – if I hate myself now then what state am I going to be in in five or 10 years?” she said.