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Shania Twain Says Lyme Disease Damaged Her Voice

"It would have killed me not to be able to ever sing again."

When a tick bite kept Shania Twain out of the spotlight for years, fans didn’t know the extent of her deteriorating health.

The singer-songwriter from Timmins, Ont. now says the Lyme disease she contracted from that bite almost damaged her vocal chords beyond repair, in a recent People interview.

“It would have killed me not to be able to ever sing again,” she told the magazine. “I wasn’t going to let my life be over if I wasn’t going to be able to sing again, but I would have been very sad and I would have mourned that forever.”

She’s picked herself up since, with a vibrant Las Vegas residency fellow Canadian performer Céline Dion would be proud of.

Fans first learned about her health struggles in the 2011 docu-series “Why Not? With Shania Twain,” where she revealed she’d gone through months of therapy for the vocal disorder dysphonia, which left her sounding hoarse and strained.

Watch the video above to find out what motivated Shania Twain to get back on-stage and more details about her second marriage.

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