If Céline Dion was able to make a thunderous return this summer during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the road to this iconic performance was particularly long. Accustomed to filling concert halls for many years, the 56-year-old Quebec diva has been affected for several years by stiff person syndrome. A very disabling pathology for the mother of René-Charles, Eddy and Nelson, who had not sung in public since March 8, 2020.
Last June, Celine Dion spoke about this illness which has been ruining her life for several years now. “It’s like someone is trying to strangle you. It’s like someone is pushing your larynx, it goes into spasm.”she confided about this very rare syndrome which she suffers from and which heavily impacts her daily life, before adding: “I had broken ribs at one point, because sometimes the spasms are so severe that it can break some of them (…) When I point my feet, they can stay in that position. If I’m cooking, because I love cooking, my fingers and my hands are going to be in a certain position.”
Claudette Dion forced to help her sister
This Sunday, December 22, BFM TV is broadcasting the documentary Celine Dion, The Iron Ladydedicated to the one who has a very personal remedy and which she cannot do without. The opportunity to hear her sister, Claudette, who rarely talks about the illness of the singer from Charlemagne, Quebec. “We said to ourselves it doesn’t matter, we get up at night too. We have some sort of cramps in our calves because we danced all evening. We said to ourselves: ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s a muscle, it’s not vital’”she explains in an extract reported by Tele-Leisurebefore giving a very telling example: “She said to me: ‘Claudette, come help me.’ She couldn’t put her boots back on because her foot was twisted. She couldn’t regain control.”
A touching speech from Claudette Dion, who became a singer late in life thanks to René Angelil, who evokes the syndrome from which her sister suffers and which impacts the entire family.
