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.

“My daughter and I had sore throats that lasted about three days, so we went to see an ear, nose and throat specialist. After examining us, he told me my daughter had the flu – and I had swine flu… I made arrangements right away for my daughter to stay with my mom… I had to stay in the house and away from everyone,” she reveals in this week’s issue of Life & Style Magazine.

“It really hit me hard… I became very achy. Plus, I had a bad cough, and my ear was infected too. I got up to go to the bathroom and became winded. I called my doctor, and he told me that I should go to the emergency room right away,” T-Boz adds. “I never felt like I was going to die, but I was really concerned that I couldn’t breathe. The doctors checked my vitals and my oxygen and told me my heartbeat was strong. Then they gave me some fluids and told me the flu was just running its course.”

“I was out from nine to 12 days. I took all the medication and some herbs and supplements to help me get better quicker.”

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.

“Because of my sickle-cell disease, I have a high tolerance for pain. By 2006, I’d had headaches for six years. I thought it was stress. But when my vision went blurry, I got an MRI. When I awoke, I could hear and I looked normal, but then I had a sickle-cell crisis. With the pain meds and steroids, they said I kept flopping and hitting my head. They gave me IV (intravenous) fluids in order to stop it,” she explains.

“After I was released (from hospital) more than a week later, the ride to my Los Angeles apartment was like vertigo to the 10th power. I had to sit up in bed for two months. They propped me up, but I kept sliding down, which made my head swell. It was so painful. At one point, fluid poured out of my nose,” T-Boz explains.

“I was readmitted (to hospital). I couldn’t walk or really see. I heard screeching noises. They said, ‘We may have to cut you open again…’ I prayed and the fluid stopped.”

The setback in her recovery became so bad, Watkins was left unable to speak for months: “In rehab, I had to relearn how to walk and how to say my ABCs.”

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.

The five-bedroom, nearly 10,000-sq. ft. house, purchased for $530,000, will go on the auction block in January 2009, according to public records.