The swine flu takes down T-Boz!
The 39-year-old former TLC singer — real name Tionne Watkins — has lived with sickle-cell anemia for more than a decade and underwent brain surgery for a non-cancerous tumor in 2007. Now the star is recovering from a battle with the potentially life-threatening H1N1 virus.
In the Oct. 12 issue of PEOPLE Magazine, Tionne Watkins, aka T-Boz from the 1990s girls group TLC, reveals that she secretly battled a brain tumor for 3 years. In 2006, the singer underwent a 7-hour surgery to rid her of the tumor, which was the size of a grapefruit and had left her blind and deaf for months. The doctor peeled it from the brain stem by making a cut behind her ear.
T-Boz, who also suffers from sickle-cell disease, reveals she was diagnosed with a non-cancerous acoustic neuroma after years of painful headaches prompted her to get a MRI. Doctors discovered she had a tumour the size of a grapefruit on her brain.
She underwent a seven-hour operation to remove the growth in November 2006.
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TLC is set to perform in the States for the first time in seven years as part of a benefit concert hosted by Justin Timberlake this fall.
Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, the two remaining members of TLC, will sing during the Justin Timberlake and Friends Concert — benefitting The Shriners Hospitals For Children — at The Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on Oct. 17.
The group’s third original member, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, was killed in a car accident in 2002.
Tickets go on sale Saturday.
Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins-Rolison is about to lose her home in Georgia after falling behind in mortgage payments.
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