The life of songstress Tina Turner has been full of more ups and downs than the public has realized before now and included a stroke, intestinal cancer and a transplanted kidney from her husband, reports People.
Just three months after the tragic suicide of her son, Craig Raymond, Turner writes in her soon-to-be-released memoir, My Love Story, that her husband, Erwin Bach, donated a kidney to her last year.
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Turner’s serious medical battles began in 2013. She suffered a stroke three weeks after she and Bach married.
She tried to leave the doctor’s office and found she was impaired, she wrote.
“That’s when I discovered I couldn’t stand on my own,” she wrote. “I was too embarrassed to call for help. Legs for days and muscles of steel from dancing, but I didn’t have the strength to get up. Terrified, I dragged myself over to a sofa, all the while thinking that I couldn’t imagine Tina Turner paralyzed. I doubted that I would ever be able to wear high heels again, let alone dance in them.”
Turner did learn to walk again, but three years later, she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. She rejected traditional treatment for homeopathic remedies, but this led her to total kidney failure, according to the book.
“The consequences of my ignorance ended up being a matter of life and death,” she writes. “At this terrible moment of guilt and self-recrimination, I learned something wonderful about Erwin. He never reproached me for my mistake. Instead, he was loyal, kind and understanding – and determined to help me get through all this alive.”
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Bach volunteered his kidney. Turner writes that she wondered if people would think she’d paid her husband to donate the organ.
“There were still people who wanted to believe that Erwin married me for my money and fame,” Turner writes. “What else would a younger man want with an older woman? Erwin always ignored the rumors.”
The surgery took place in April 2017 and was a success though, Turner writes, she still has complications such as dizziness, forgetfulness, anxiety and “insane diarrhea” as her body struggles not to reject the organ.
Turner writes that although she has been through a violent first marriage with Ike Turner and other ups and downs, her story is a happy one now.
“Joy came out of pain,” she writes. “I have never been so completely happy as I am today.”