I hear a familiar voice singing behind a locked door in a posh neighborhood 30 minutes from the Las Vegas strip as the sun sets behind the mountains.
“Is that Celine?” I inquire.
The man watching over her hotel suite nods.
She seems to be in a good mood, and I am about to interview her, a musical megastar.
Fans are worried that they might never hear the famous voice that I can hear idly singing away.
“I have been coping with health issues for a considerable amount of time,” she stated in a December 2022 Instagram video.
“I have been diagnosed with a very rare neurological disorder.”
Following that heartbreaking declaration, Celine Dion withdrew from the rest of her world.
Her little-known sickness is officially known as Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS), a neurological disorder that results in spasms in the muscles.
Celine tells me as we get to talking that the condition was misdiagnosed for years.
The 56-year-old talks about how her voice began to change while she was on tour, which upset her as a performer.
The Canadian celebrity explains, “It was just feeling a little strange, like a little spasm.”
“My voice was struggling; I was starting to push a little bit.”
She sings the opening few bars of her 1993 hit song The Power of Love to highlight the minor difference in her voice—that is, she was having to strain to hold sounds that used to come more naturally.
