Celine Dion Can No Longer Control Muscles, Comeback Crushed: Report

Posted on: December 18, 2023, 06:02h. 

Last updated on: December 19, 2023, 11:03h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas.

Hopes for a Celine Dion comeback in Las Vegas, buoyed briefly by her first public appearance at Katy Perry’s farewell “Play” residency date at Resorts World, have been positively crushed by a new report out of France.

Celine Dion
Celine Dion flashes the thumbs-up with her sons Eddy, René-Charles, and Nelson in the Montreal Canadiens’ locker room during the team’s October 30 game against the Vegas Golden Knights. A recent health report on Dion from the music superstar’s older sister is a clear thumbs-down. (Image: Instagram/Celine Dion)

The superstar’s older sister tells the French magazine 7 Jours that Dion, 55, can no longer control her muscles. Dion is battling Stiff Person’s Syndrome, a progressive and incurable neurological disorder that causes the body to attack its own nerve cells.

She’s working hard, but she doesn’t have control over her muscles,” Claudette Dion, 74, told the magazine. “What breaks my heart is that she’s always been disciplined. She’s always worked hard. Our mother always told her, ‘You’re going to do it well, you’re going to do it properly.’”

A year ago this month, Dion’s condition, which affects fewer than one in every million people, caused her to cancel a world tour and announce her diagnosis to the world.

Stiff Person’s Syndrome is marked by rigid muscles that spasm painfully and uncontrollably when triggered by noise and emotional distress. Some people in its grips can transform into “human statues” who can’t walk or talk.

“Unfortunately, the spasms affect every aspect of my daily life, sometimes causing difficulties when I walk and not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I’m used to,” the former record-shattering Caesars Palace headliner said in a tearful video announcing her diagnosis.

People with Stiff Person’s Syndrome are usually women diagnosed between ages 30-50.

Celine Dion
Celine Dion performs the final concert of her 16-year Las Vegas residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace on June 8, 2019. (Image: ABC News)

Her Hope Will Go On

Dion’s presence at the finale of Katy Perry’s “Play” residency at Resorts World on November 4 touched millions of her fans. That’s because it was Dion who was supposed to open Resorts World with her residency exactly two years earlier.

And reading reports that the multiplatinum-selling singer danced throughout Perry’s performance gave them hope that she was, somehow, on the road to recovery.

However, her condition has worsened in the weeks since.

It’s true that in both our dreams and hers, the goal is to return to the stage,” Claudette said in the same interview. “In what capacity? I don’t know … The vocal cords are muscles, and the heart is also a muscle.”

Claudette previously revealed that, despite working with “the top researchers in the field,” Celine has seen little improvement in her health. Their middle sister, Linda, 64, has moved into Dion’s Las Vegas mansion to serve as caretaker.

“We can’t find any medicine that works,” Claudette told the newspaper Le Journal de Montreal in August, “but having hope is important.”