Reality for TLC's T-Boz has been a challenge, starting at age 7, when she was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia.
"I
was told I wouldn't live past 30, I would be disabled my whole life and
I would never become a mother," T-Boz, a member of one of the most
successful girl groups ever, told CNN. "My daughter is Chase. She's 12.
I've traveled the world in one of the best groups ever. I'm 42."
Reality called again five years ago when doctors found a brain tumor, which left her partially blind and deaf.
"But
after losing my sight, hearing, balance and speech, yes, I'm
returning," said T-Boz, whose real name is Tionne Watkins. "I had to
take three years to heal and fight for everything that I wanted back.
T-Boz
is sharing the lessons learned from hard reality in a reality TV show
that premieres Tuesday night, coincidentally on a network with the same
name as her group - TLC.
"It's
about 20 years later, me coming back from the brain tumor and doing
things I want to do," she said. "You'll hear about all that in the show,
my real-life struggles, being a single mother. I don't care how much
money you have in the world. It's not about that. It's all about time.
I'm in charge of raising a young woman one day, to be a mother and
hopefully a wife. All of that. As you know, being a parent, that's
probably the hardest job ever"
"Totally T-Boz" is real -- especially compared with most shows, she said: "They're fake as all get-out, right? I'm real."
Her experience with reality TV includes being fired by Donald Trump on "Celebrity Apprentice" in 2009.
"If
I'm not the chick you want, because you don't want that, then they'll
probably censure me," she said. "That's fine, but I'm staying me,
because I'm happy and I've always been happy in my skin."
When a
doctor told her that her headaches were caused by a tumor, "I said 'Say
huh? Say huh?" she said. The diagnosis triggered a string of emotions,
but never anger, she said.
"I had that fight," she said. "I want to live. I didn't have time to die."
The hardest time was not knowing if the tumor was cancerous and if it would kill her, she said.
She began a desperate search for doctors she trusted who did not look at her "just like I was a dollar sign," she said.
"In
my gut, I know if I had stayed in Atlanta, and let them touch me, I
wouldn't be here," she said. "I wasn't going to make it through those
surgeries. I was going to die. And I felt that."
She chose a Los Angeles doctor to oversee her treatment and brain surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
"I said, 'I know this is him in my heart," she said. "I packed up my stuff and my family and I came here."
But she had to make a decision.
"I
had to give the order of what I wanted to be saved," she said. "So I
said my face first, because you couldn't look at me and tell I'm deaf or
blind. My hearing second, because I still want to hear and sing and
have my speech. And then my balance. So they took my balance completely
from the right."
But
after three years of physical therapy to teach her brain how to
compensate for the loss of balance, "mostly everything else is back. I
can hear and see and I can speak," she said. "So I am blessed."
When you meet her now, it's hard now to tell anything was ever wrong with T-Boz.
"I
still have a crooked smile and just certain things I deal with, but
I'll take all of that to be back here and be Chase's mother," she said.
Don’t
forget to like us on Facebook: LA2LAGOS on Facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment