Shania Twain has described her frightening experience of contracting Lyme disease and the extent to which it altered her voice, in her new Netflix documentary Not Just a Girl.
The 56-year-old singer has said she feared she would never be able to sing again after Lyme disease left her with nerve damage to her vocal cords.
The You're Still The One hitmaker opened up about her battle with the debilitating illness which coincided with the breakdown of her marriage to ex-husband Robert 'Mutt' Lange.
Shania had previously revealed that she contracted the bacterial infection after being bitten by a tick while horseback riding in Norfolk, Virginia in 2003.
After developing problems with her vocal cords and losing her voice, she took a break from performing.
Describing the frightening experience of initially not knowing what was wrong, Shania told the Netflix cameras: “It was nearing the end of the tour, I was out horseback riding and I was bit by a tick. The tick was infected with Lyme's disease.
Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness, which is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and spreads through the bite of an infected tick.
She continued: “My symptoms were quite scary because before I was diagnosed, I was on stage very dizzy, losing my balance. I was afraid I was going to fall off the stage.
“So, I was adjusting what I was doing. I was having these millisecond blackouts regularly – every minute or thirty seconds.”
The five-time Grammy Award winner said her voice was “never the same again” after contracting the illness, adding: “It just went into this strange flanging, lack of control of the airflow. I didn't understand it.
“I thought I'd lost my voice forever. I thought that was it. That I would never, ever sing again.”
She continued: “In that search to determine what was causing this lack of control with my voice and this change in my voice, I was facing a divorce.
“Now I'm at a whole other low. I just don't see any point in going on with the music career.”
The singer underwent multiple throat surgeries to try to correct the damage, which almost prevented her from ever stepping on the stage again.
She revealed that the procedure was an open-throat operation, which aimed to stabilise the weakness in her vocal cord function, although she has acknowledged that some of the vocal damage was permanent and her voice would never be the same as it was before.
While Shania is now able to perform again, she admitted that the "debilitating" experience caused her to avoid daily interactions like speaking on the phone or talking loudly at gatherings.
Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness, which is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and spread through the bite of an infected tick.
