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Shania Twain is feeling lucky to be here.
Speaking with the Mirror, the Canadian country icon opened up about her life-threatening battle with COVID pneumonia at the height of the pandemic.
“It was progressively getting worse,” she said of her struggle breathing. “My vital signs were getting worse… and in the end I had to be air evacuated.”
Describing the helicopter trip to the hospital from her home on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, she said, “It was like science fiction, I felt like I was going to another planet or something. It all kind of happened in slow motion.”
Due to the influx of patients at the time, securing a hospital bed wasn’t easy either, but her husband Frédéric Thiébaud was on it.
“My husband was freaking out, to be honest. He was really panicking because he was the one having to pull it all together,” Twain said. “He spent hours and hours every day on the phone, trying to get an air evacuation coordinated, trying to get a bed lined up, as there were none, checking my vital signs. It was just a real nightmare for him.”
Finally, though, she got to the hospital and was put in isolation, receiving plasma therapy.
“It took several days to start building up any antibodies at all, so it was a very dangerous time and very scary,” Twain said. “I made it through and I’m just so grateful.”
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Talking about how thankful she was to have her husband, Twain said she feels for those who don’t have the kind of support network she has.
“I thought, ‘Wow, if I was living alone in a more isolated scenario, I don’t know what would have happened’. My heart goes out to people who don’t have that support to help them get the right care,” she said.
Recovering from the disease, the 57-year-old put some of her feelings into her latest album Queen of Me, and in particular the song “Inhale/Exhale Air”.
“It’s a song of gratitude and appreciation,” Twain said. “I was inspired that I still had air in my lungs.”
