Shania Twain’s new documentary, Shania Twain: Not Just a Girl, debuted on Netflix on Tuesday (July 26).
The documentary looks back on the country singer’s rise to international superstar and dives into the singer’s Lyme disease diagnosis at the height of her career.
“My symptoms were quite scary because before I was diagnosed, I was on stage very dizzy,” she recalled in the special. “I was losing my balance. I was afraid I was gonna fall off the stage, and the stage is quite high.”
She added that the sympotoms affected her performances because it meant she had to change where she stood while singing. “I was staying far from the edge, I was adjusting what I was doing,” she explained. “I was having these very, very millisecond blackouts, but regularly, like, every minute or every 30 seconds.”
Twain spoke more about the symptoms she faced in a 2020 interview with Loose Women. “There was a long time where I thought I would never sing again,” she shared. “I would say [it was] probably a good seven years before a doctor was able to find out that it was nerve damage to my vocal cords, directly caused by Lyme disease. I was simply out horseback riding in the forest and got bit by a tick.”
According to the CDC, untreated Lyme disease can produce a wide range of symptoms, depending on the stage of infection. These include fever, rash, facial paralysis, arthritis, episodes of dizziness or shortness of breath, and more.
Watch Not Just a Girl on Netflix now and check out the official audio soundtrack.
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