MY ILLNESS WON’T DEFINE ME
R&B star T-boz opens up about living with a blood disorder.
It’s not always easy being a rock-star mum. Now touring with her bandmate Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, Tionne “T-boz” Watkins—a founding member of the popular 1990s girl group TLC— has been getting unhappy phone calls from her daughter Chase, 16, back home in Los Angeles. “Chase did our makeup on the first leg of the tour, but she has to go to school,” says Watkins, 47. “She’s so upset! She’s like, ‘I miss Chance’ ”—the little brother, 2, whom the R&B star adopted in May 2016 and has brought on tour. “I’m like, ‘What about your mom?’ It’s all about Chance! He’s a ray of sunshine.”
That’s a good kind of problem to have, of course. And Watkins appreciates her current blessings all the more for the darkness she’s been through. In an excerpt from her new memoir, A Sick Life, written with Emily Zemler, she recounts her lifelong struggle with sickle-cell disease, a painful, sometimes fatal blood disorder (see box)—and how her muchloved family has helped her through. “It’s an everyday thing: you have good times and sometimes it’s bad days or weeks or months,” she says of her illness, which has no cure. “I’ve been through so much. I feel like I’m supposed to share my story to help someone else.”
When I was a baby I cried all the time. My mom knew something wasn’t right. Too much heat dehydrated me, too much cold made me achy. Swimming in a chilly pool, drinking In 1977, when she was 7, a doctor finally diagnosed her with sickle-cell anaemia. milk, playing in the snow could all trigger a crisis. Doctors didn’t know what was wrong. They gave me all sorts of conflicting drugs, drugs that have made me throw up, scratch uncontrollably, hallucinate. They loaded me with really powerful painkillers.
“What does that mean?” my mom asked. I leaned forward. I wanted to know, too. Maybe he could get rid of all my pain. “She won’t live past 30,” he explained, bluntly. “She can’t ever have children. She’s going to be disabled her entire life.” I was only 7, but I wasn’t too young to understand. I looked around. Who was he talking about? I was going to be a famous performer. He was clearly mistaken. My mom lowered herself to look into my eyes. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said, confidently. “God has the last say so in your life.” Watkins’s disease landed her in the hospital on and off in the years that followed, but nothing
would deter her from pursuing her dream to sing. In 1991, she, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and Thomas launched TLC. Their debut album, Ooooooohhh … On the TLC Tip (1992), and 1994’s Crazysexycool catapulted them to fame.
In the mid-’90s there were a lot of rumours flying around about celebrities and AIDS. I was in and out of hospitals a lot, and every time I went in, I’d hear people muttering. They’d ask, “Does she have any symptoms?” They meant, “Does she have AIDS?” At one of our shows, I collapsed after we finished performing, and I left in an ambulance. Rumours spread. I wasn’t ready to come out with what I really had, though. I didn’t want to feel pitied. In the summer of 1996 she revealed her sickle-cell battle. Later that year she received a more specific diagnosis: sickle-beta thalassemia with arthritis, a form of the disease that is often less severe.
Before, the doctors knew it was some type of sickle-cell, and that I had all the symptoms every other sickler had—
except for the physical characteristics. But there was no exact definition for it. Now there was a real name for what I’d been feeling for decades. It was an enormous relief. Doctors had told her she wouldn’t be able to conceive, but in 2000 Watkins learnt she was pregnant. In October of that year she and rapper husband Dedrick “Mack 10” Rolison welcomed daughter Chase Anela.
On the first night, the nurses told me I needed to breastfeed her. It seemed like the right thing to do. And they make you feel so guilty if you don’t pop your titties out for the baby immediately. But sickle-cell patients need every drop of fluid they can get, and losing that much breast milk almost stopped my heart. Eventually, my body shut down and I fell into a coma. I spent three days unconscious in the ICU.
When I did finally wake, my mama was there. “Go get her baby,” my mama told one of the nurses. I could hear the urgency in her voice. “Tionne,” my mama said. “You have to fight. You have someone to live for.” Chase breathed slowly on top of me. She was definitely something to live for. In the ensuing years Watkins faced a series of tragedies: the 2002 car crash that killed friend and bandmate Lopes, divorce from Rolison in 2004, and a brain tumour in 2006, which she battled successfully. It all took a toll.
When I get emotional, my disease flares up more than usual. Often, it’s hard to breathe or walk or even do something as basic as holding a pen. A crisis can happen without any warning. Just, bam! You’re in the hospital again. Some days I wake up consumed by pain. It’s like knives stabbing me over and over again in my joints. Sometimes I can’t hold a glass of water. Usually, when I’m in a lot of pain, I can’t walk. It hurts to lay down, but it hurts to sit up. Chase gave me a reason to keep pushing through. But because I have this disease, I’ve always wondered if I’d be able to give her a sibling. Luckily, there’s more than one way to make a family. In May 2016 Watkins adopted a baby boy she named Chance Ace.
Chance has brought new life and fulfilment in our house and made us feel even more complete, and I can’t thank his birth mother enough for that. Watkins still struggles daily with her disease, but her children help her stay strong.
You don’t want your kids to know you think you might die. I don’t want my daughter or my son to feel my pain. I’ve got to keep a normal face on. It’s a double-edged sword, because I am afraid and I do need support, but I also understand that my own strength is essential, both for me and for those around me.
My life, my sick life, has been tinged with illness. But I refuse to be defined by it.
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“I have to worry about it every day of my life. You can be in so much pain you get delirious” —Watkins on her disease