Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS) causes Celine Dion’s muscles to tense up uncontrollably.

Patients eventually become “human statues” as the disease causes the body to gradually lock into stiff positions, rendering patients unable to walk or communicate.

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Despite the fact that there is no recognised treatment for SPS, Celine claims she is doing everything in her power to lessen symptoms.

In an emotional Instagram message on Thursday, the 54-year-old singer expressed her regret to her admirers and admitted that she had to cancel her next European tour as a result.

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Who is Celine Dion?

Canadian singer Céline Marie Claudette Dion, CC OQ, was born on March 30, 1968. Dion is the best-selling Canadian recording artist and the best-selling French-language singer of all time. She is renowned for her strong and technically proficient voice. She has integrated pop, rock, R&B, gospel, and classical music into her music.

Dion, who was raised in a large family in Charlemagne, Quebec, rose to fame as a young adult in her native nation thanks to a string of French-language albums released in the 1980s. In 1982, she won the Yamaha World Popular Song Festival, and in 1988, she represented Switzerland in the Eurovision Song Contest, when she first attained international acclaim. 

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She earned a contract with American record label Epic Records after becoming fluent in English. When Dion released her first English-language album, Unison, in 1990, she made a name for herself as a successful pop performer in North America and other English-speaking nations. Since then, she has primarily recorded in English and French, but she has also sung in other languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese, and Chinese.

She became well-known all over the world in the 1990s after releasing several of the best-selling English-language albums in music history, including Falling into You and Let’s Talk About Love, both of which sold over 30 million copies worldwide and were given diamond certification in the US. The Power of Love, Think Twice, Because You Loved Me, It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, My Heart Will Go On, and I’m Your Angel are just a few of the international number-one songs she’s amassed.

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Between each English album, Dion continued to release albums in the French language. D’eux, S’il suffisait d’aimer, Sans attendre, and Encore un soir were all given the French diamond certification. With A New Day… on the Las Vegas Strip, which is still the highest-grossing concert residency of all time, as well as the Taking Chances World Tour, one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time, she established herself as a highly successful live performer during the 2000s.

With more than 200 million records sold globally, Dion is also one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Dion is recognised as one of pop music’s most influential and prosperous vocalists, despite the fact that her albums frequently garner mixed reviews. Five Grammy Awards, including those for Album of the Year and Record of the Year, have been won by her. Dion has been referred to as the Priestess of Pop throughout her four-decade career and has been awarded two Honorary Doctorates in Music from the Université Laval and the Berklee College of Music.

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She was dubbed the Queen of Adult Contemporary by Billboard for having the most female artists with number-one songs on the radio. Dion is the eighth best-performing top female artist in the US all-time, the second-best-selling female artist in the US during the Nielsen SoundScan, and the sixth-best-performing female soloist in the history of the Billboard 200.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) recognised her in 2003 for selling more than 50 million albums in Europe. Dion was named the top-selling foreign performer in South Africa in 2008. With album sales and concert earnings of over $747 million, Dion was named the highest-earning musician of that decade by the Los Angeles Times at the end of 2009.

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It was in 1980 when Dion was 12 and René Angélil was 38, that she first met her future husband and manager. Her brother, Michel Dondalinger Dion, had sent him a tape of the song Ce n’était qu’un rêve, which she, her mother Thérèse, and her brother Jacques Dion had co-written. Angélil helped her ascend to popularity in francophone regions during the ensuing years.

Following Dion’s victory in the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin in 1988, when she was 20 years old, their professional relationship eventually developed into romance. For five years, the relationship was kept a secret from everyone but family and close friends, despite Dion almost spilling the beans in a sad 1992 interview with Lise Payette. For Dion’s 2007 album D’elles, Payette wrote the song Je cherche l’ombre several years later.

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On March 30, 1993, Dion’s 25th birthday, she and Angélil got engaged. They made their relationship known in the liner notes of her album The Colour of My Love from that year. In Montreal, Quebec’s Notre-Dame Basilica, on December 17, 1994, they were married. Dion and Angélil renewed their vows to one another in Las Vegas on January 5, 2000.

After deciding to use in vitro fertilisation as a result of years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive, Dion underwent two minor surgeries in May 2000 at a fertility clinic in New York to increase her chances of getting pregnant. René-Charles Angélil, their first child, was born on January 25, 2001. In 2009, Dion experienced a miscarriage. Angélil made the announcement that she was 14 weeks along with twins following her sixth in vitro fertilisation procedure in May 2010.

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Angélil died from throat cancer on January 14, 2016, at the age of 73. On January 22, 2016, his funeral was held in Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica, where he and Dion were married 21 years prior. Three days before his 15th birthday, René-Charles, the couple’s oldest son, delivered the eulogy. Dion took over as the sole owner and president of her management and production firms, including CDA Productions and Les Productions Feeling, after Angélil’s passing.

On the day that would have been her husband’s birthday, two days after Angélil died from cancer, Daniel, Dion’s brother, died at age of 59.

On March 22, 2018, Dion’s management team disclosed that she had been experiencing hearing irregularities due to a patulous Eustachian tube for the previous 12 to 18 months and would undergo a minimally invasive surgical procedure to address the issue after it appeared that ear-drop medications were no longer effective.

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Under the instruction of Naomi Stikeman, a former dancer for Dion who has also worked with The National Ballet of Canada and La La La Human Steps, and Pepe Muoz, a former dancer for Cirque du Soleil who is now a fashion illustrator and a member of her styling team, Dion began studying ballet. She attends her son René-Charles’ hockey games frequently and enjoys skiing as well.

Dion lives in a home she and her husband bought in 2003 in Henderson, Nevada. She had previously owned residences in Jupiter Island, Florida, and Montreal, Quebec.

Dion revealed that she had been given a Stiff-person syndrome diagnosis in December 2022.