As one third of the successful R&B/Hip-Hop female group TLC with Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, T-Boz can tell you about overcoming obstacles in life. With her battle with (incurable)sickle cell animea, doctors told Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins that she wouldn't see pass 30 and have kids. Now at age 39, she has a 9 year old daughter and is in recording studio working on a solo album. '
But T-Boz faced another scare in her life. Recently, she sat down with CNN's Dr. Sunjay Gupta and revealed that she had a brain tumor five years ago. Due to her medical condition, doctors told her to consider radiation because surgery was not an option for the brain tumor. However, Ms.T-Boz was able to find another to successfully remove the brain tumor.
Read T-Boz interview below:
I grew up singing in church with my mother but I always had the same dream and I would see myself in baggy pants, running from the left side of the stage bending down to the right shaking someone’s hand, and a whole bunch of people are screaming for me. In my heart and until this day, I really believed it.”Doctors, they didn’t give me a very happy ending. You won’t live past 30, you’ll be disabled your whole life. You’ll never have kids. I was looking around the room like, ‘I don’t know who he’s talking to because that’s not my story.”
On Making Her Dreams a Reality Despite Her Sickle Cell Diagnosis
I think it had to do a lot with my mother, too, because she never made me feel different.
On Her Brain Tumor
I started having headaches, but they were so frequent, something was wrong. My doctor called, but his voice sounded funny. And I said, ‘You’re gonna say something like I have a brain tumor, right?’ He got quiet”
On Not Letting Her Disease Not Stopping Her From Making It Happen
"I go for it. I believe words are powerful. And I think everything, every last single thing in life happens for a reason."
With her upcoming solo album in the works, T-Boz is using her celebrity status to send a message the African American community. She wants to encourage them to be bone marrow donors to help young people with blood disorders and sickle cell.
Watch the CNN interview:
