*Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins has dropped a memoir titled “A Sick Life – TLC ‘n’ Me: Stories from On and Off the Stage,” in which she explores her career as well as her life living with sickle cell disease.
According to an excerpt in People’s new issue, the singer wrote about how breastfeeding her daughter Chase nearly killed her due to complications from the disease.
“On the first night, the nurses told me I needed to breastfeed her,” she wrote. “It seemed like the right thing to do. And they make you feel so guilty if you don’t pop your tits out for the baby immediately,” she wrote.
“[S]ickle cell patients need every drop of fluid they can get, and losing that much breast milk almost stopped my heart,” Watkins wrote. “Eventually, my body shut down and I fell into a coma. I spent three days unconscious in the ICU.”
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On Wednesday, Watkins appeared on “AOL Build” to promote her memoir and during her interview, she talk about how she was misdiagnosed at age 7 and it wasn’t until she was 28 that she was finally properly diagnosed.
“Most doctors don’t tell a 7-year-old you can die by the time you’re 30, you’ll never have kids and you’ll be disabled your whole life,” Watkins said about the experience. She also wrote that her other symptoms include having difficulty breathing and walking.
“Some days I wake up consumed by pain,” she wrote. “It’s like knives stabbing me over and over again in my joints. [My daughter] Chase gave me a reason to keep pushing through.”
Watkins has made it her mission to continue spreading awareness for sickle cell disease.
“I want to really clear it up and hopefully give everyone a better understanding of my disease and what I really went through,” she said.
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