Stiff-Person Syndrome: Celine Dion cancels all remaining live shows over poor health
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Hashim Sheikh
- . May 27, 2023
- . Update: May 27, 2023 7:46 pm
Prominent singer Celine Dion – known for a number of hits including My Heart Will Go On, All By Myself, Because You Loved Me, and It’s All Coming Back To Me Now – has cancelled all her remaining live shows, telling fans she isn’t physically fit to tour.
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Dion has been diagnosed with a rare health condition. The singer revealed last year she was suffering from Stiff-Person Syndrome (SPS), which was affecting her health and not allowing her to use her vocal cords to sing the way she is used to.
In a statement on Twitter, the 55-year-old made an apology for cancelling all the shows scheduled for 2023 and 2024. “It’s best that we cancel everything until I’m ready to be back on stage,” she said, adding “I’m not giving up.”
The French Canadian singer uploaded an emotional video on Instagram last December, revealing her rare health condition and that she won’t be ready to start a European tour in February as decided earlier.
She elaborated on the difficulties she was facing at the time, adding the disorder was causing muscle spasms. The Courage World Tour started in 2019, and the singer successfully made an appearance and stunned the audience in 52 shows before COVID put the remainder on hold.
The North American dates were later cancelled owing to Dion’s health problems, while the European leg of the tour was delayed. But on Friday, those European dates were cancelled altogether, affecting potential shows in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm, and others.
The tour was to have been Dion’s first international concert tour in a decade and the first without her husband-manager Rene Angelil, who passed away in 2016 from cancer. The singer took two career breaks to support her husband after he was diagnosed with throat cancer, first in 2000.
Stiff-Person Syndrome is a rare condition and is yet to be well understood. People with SPS are often reluctant to leave their residences as street noises can trigger falls and spasms. They can also be too disabled to move or walk.
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Most people with the condition have frequent falls. And their injuries can be serious as they lack the normal defensive reflexes. While there is no cure for it, anti-anxiety medicines, muscle relaxants, and certain other treatments can be followed to slow down its progression.
