Céline Dion offers audiences a glimpse into what life with rigid person syndrome is like.
At the beginning of the new documentary I am: Celine Dionwhich began to be transmitted main video On Tuesday, viewers are faced with the following disclaimer: “This film contains powerful scenes of medical trauma. Viewer discretion is advised.”
The end of the documentary features Dion in a physical therapy session, during which she experiences a spasm in her foot. After lying face down on a massage table, her physical therapist explains that “this gives us an indication” that her “brain is overstimulated and something is happening.”
“And she keeps having spasms,” he continues. “That could lead to a crisis.”
Finally, he says that he is “having a seizure” and moves Dion, who is in visible and audible pain, to his side. As she does so, she asks him to lift his head, but she can’t move. Tears well up in Dion’s eyes as she whimpers and her body shakes.
At the end, he is given a nasal spray, Dr. Amanda Piquet, Dion’s neurologist and director of the autoimmune neurology program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine’s Anschutz Medical Campus, told him. TODAY.com It was “benzodiazepine nasal spray.” Piquet also highlighted that what Dion experienced “was not a seizure,” but rather “a spasm that is occurring and the patients are aware of what is happening.”
“Every time something like this happens, it makes you feel very embarrassed, and then, I don’t know how to put it, it’s just… not having control of yourself,” Dion says in the doc.
Director Irene Taylor explained to Yahoo! Entertainment that after seeing the scene, Dion “didn’t want to [her] change anything,” according to New York Post. After remembering that “they responded as quickly as we could” and that she “was holding a microphone [and used it] to measure whether he was breathing or not,” he stressed that the experience was “very disturbing.”
“I know it’s hard for some viewers, but it was hard for me too,” he continued. “But I will tell you that Celine felt validated by seeing herself like that and she thought it would help her if other people could understand what she was like. [SPS] it is like.”
While Taylor “really thought it was very unlikely” that Dion would experience an episode during filming, she told Yahoo! Entertainment: “If that happens, [Celine] He told me over and over again: ‘Don’t ask me for permission to film, keep filming and we’ll talk about it later.’ Just because you film something doesn’t mean the world needs to see it. “It’s very private.”
Taylor reiterated this to other outlets, such as salon.comrecalling that once Dion saw an edited version of the scene for the first time, “she specifically said, ‘Don’t take a second off.’”
Dion was diagnosed with stiff person syndrome in 2022. He spoke with TodayHoda Kotb in her first television interview since her diagnosis titled The Celine Story: An NBC News Special with Hoda Kotbwhich aired on June 11.
In the trailer for the documentary, Dion confesses that “it’s been a struggle” and notes that she misses singing and seeing people.
I am: Celine Dion now streaming on Prime Video. Watch the trailer above.
