Shania Twain’s Lyme Disease Caused ‘Blackouts’ While She Was Performing ‘Every 30 Seconds’

Shania Twain shared her frightening experiences with Lyme disease symptoms before being diagnosed in a segment of her new Netflix documentary Not Just A Girl. The iconic country singer was bitten by a tick while horse riding during a 2003 concert tour.

“My symptoms were quite scary because before I was diagnosed, I was on stage very dizzy,” Twain recalled. “I was afraid I was gonna fall off the stage, and the stage was quite high.” She also shared that the dizziness escalated into “these very, very, very millisecond blackouts, but very regularly, every minute or every 30 seconds.”

Lyme disease is a little-understood tick-borne disease that can spread and damage the heart, nervous system and joints if left untreated. Twain’s voice also suffered due to the Lyme Disease diagnosis. “My voice was never the same again,” she said, and she had to have an invasive open-throat operation to help it recover.

After discussing the change in her, Twain also shared that she “didn’t see any point in going on with her music career” after her first husband Robert Lange cheated on her with her close friend Marie-Anne Thiébaud. However, in a humorous coincidence, Twain found love soon after because she “swapped” husbands in a sense with Marie Anne when she married her ex, Frédéric Thiébaud.

Twain did release her first album since Lyme disease pushed her into a hiatus in 2017. The album was titled Now and it debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart as well as the US Billboard 200. Some critics gave the album a mixed reception due to Twain’s differing vocals from her earlier work.