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Céline Dion shared a harrowing experience from her Caesars Palace concert residency.
Revealing to People Magazine that she felt overwhelmed and disoriented before a show. “Suddenly I started to feel the corridor getting narrower and narrower,” she recalled.
“I’m holding onto the wall, and I’m like, ‘What is happening?'” Assuming it was a drop in blood sugar, she drank some orange juice and persevered, insisting, “The people have been waiting!”
This incident is one of many personal struggles Dion opened up about in her new documentary, I Am: Celine Dion, streaming on Prime Video from June 25.
Dion, 56, recounted a chilling experience where she lost track of time, feeling like 10 minutes had passed, but in reality, two hours had elapsed. “They said, ‘Céline, the show has been cancelled. People are gone,'” she revealed to the outlet during a Zoom call from her Las Vegas home in early June.
This incident was just one of many baffling symptoms she experienced starting in the mid-2000s, including muscle spasms, breathing difficulties, vision problems, and debilitating “crisis” episodes that left her body rigid and in excruciating pain.
Despite these challenges, Dion persevered, continuing to record albums and perform sold-out tours and residencies.
“The ‘hole’ in her memory,” as she described it, was just the beginning of her journey to confront her mysterious health issues.
“I was going down, down, down. It took my whole life. But it’s like if my kids are rollerblading, for example, and one of their ankles is hurting. They don’t want to tell me because I’m going to say, ‘Well, take a break from rollerblading,'” she explained of why she held off on digging deeper into her health struggles.
“I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to stay onstage. I wanted to be brave instead of smart. That was wrong.”
Dion announced in a moving Instagram video from December 2022 that she had been diagnosed with SPS, a rare and progressive autoimmune and neurological disorder that can cause muscle rigidity, mobility issues, excruciating spasms, and shortness of breath.
This came after she had postponed, then cancelled, a series of European concert dates and delayed a new residency.
“While people were holding on to their tickets, I was holding on to my dear life,” she said.