Credit: The Kelly Clarkson Show
The fact that Shania Twain, the woman who sold over 40 million copies of a single album, spent 99 weeks in the Billboard 200’s Top 20, and became by most accounts the most commercially successful female country music artist in history, almost lost the one thing that made it all possible during a horseback ride is somewhat shocking. Not an automobile collision. Not a mishap on the stadium stage. Somewhere in 2003, during what ought to have been a typical afternoon, there was a tick bite.
Lyme disease was present in the tick. Twain contracted Lyme disease. It would take years to fully identify and even longer to partially correct the series of neurological events that started to unfold inside her body after that. During the three weeks that passed between the time she was bitten and the beginning of her treatment, the disease caused damage to the nerves that controlled her vocal cords. Looking back, those three weeks felt like an almost intolerable burden.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Eileen Regina “Shania” Twain OC |
| Born | August 28, 1965, Windsor, Ontario, Canada |
| Age | 60 |
| Profession | Singer, Songwriter |
| Known For | Best-selling female artist in country music history; Come On Over, Man! I Feel Like a Woman! |
| Illness | Lyme Disease (contracted 2003 via tick bite); Dysphonia (neurological vocal cord condition) |
| Treatment | Vocal therapy (years); open-throat surgery |
| Career Hiatus | 2004–2011 |
| Records Sold | Over 100 million worldwide |
| Reference | Official Shania Twain Website |
The initial symptoms, which she described as terrifying, included standing on stage in the middle of a performance, feeling suddenly lightheaded, losing her balance, and having what she called “millisecond blackouts” every thirty seconds or so. It doesn’t quite make sense that Shania Twain, who had headlined the Super Bowl halftime show and performed at Wembley Stadium, would be terrified of falling off a stage until you keep in mind that illness doesn’t negotiate with careers.
The fact that no one made the connection for years contributed to the situation’s extreme cruelty and difficulty in diagnosis. Dysphonia, a condition where the muscles controlling the vocal cords weaken and spasm, disrupting pitch, clarity, and control, was left unexplained for a long time after Lyme disease was finally discovered and treated. She talked about a seven-year period during which she was unable to call out for her dog without her voice breaking. For seven years. That loss was as personal as it gets for someone whose voice served as both her career and the cornerstone of her entire identity since she was eight years old, singing in bars in Timmins, Ontario, to support her family. Her condition didn’t even have a name until a neurologist made the connection between Lyme disease and the nerve damage affecting each vocal cord.
Like all real medical rehabilitation, the road back was arduous and unglamorous. First, vocal therapy. It took years to regain control over muscles that were no longer reacting as they used to. After that reached a plateau, and she had open-throat surgery. This procedure poses a genuine risk to any singer and an almost existential risk to someone whose voice is their professional instrument. A partial recovery was made possible by the surgery. Her voice returned. Functional, but not the same voice—different in tone and range, permanently altered by everything it had gone through. feasible. Once more, hers, but in a different way. She had to start over with a rebuilt instrument and figure out what it could still do to learn how to sing.
It’s difficult to ignore how much Shania Twain’s illness story is condensed into the larger story of her career. Come On Over, the best-selling studio album by a female solo artist ever, the five Grammys, the Diamond certifications, and the fact that she is one of only seven women in US history to achieve that triple-Diamond status across three consecutive albums are the record sales that garner the most attention. In contrast, the illness is typically recorded as a footnote, such as “went on hiatus in 2004, returned in 2011.” However, the reality between those two dates was far more difficult and complex than that framing implies. She wasn’t sleeping. She was fighting for something she wasn’t sure she could get back, mostly in private and in silence.
When the return did occur, it was sincere rather than triumphant, as well-planned comeback stories usually are. After publishing an autobiography in 2011 and documenting her vocal rehabilitation on an OWN miniseries, she resumed performing, first in 2014 with a residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and then in 2015 with a full North American tour. Her first studio album in fifteen years, Now, came out in 2017 with the unique weight of someone who had sincerely questioned whether they would release another one. She is currently living in Las Vegas for the third time. In 2023, the Queen of Me album was released. She continues to work, tour, and use a voice that surgeons partially rebuilt and doctors were once unable to explain.
It’s worth listening to Twain’s statement that she was thankful that the Lyme disease hadn’t targeted her heart instead of her voice. After a serious illness, there is a certain kind of perspective that comes from someone who has truly inventoried what they still have—someone who has accounted for what might have been lost and made the somewhat stubborn decision to concentrate on what is left. Her voice has changed. Everything else is, too. That might not be totally detrimental.
