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.

“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.”