Pop singer Avril Lavigne teared up during an interview on "Good Morning America" on Monday while describing how her Lyme disease was misdiagnosed early on.
Lavigne, 30, the Canadian-born singer best known for her 2007 No. 1 hit "Girlfriend," told
"GMA" she struggled to find out about the illness that overcame her last year.
"I was in Los Angeles, and it was literally the worst time of my life," said Lavigne, trying to hold back tears during the interview. "I was seeing every specialist, and literally like the top doctors ... It was so stupid. They would pull up their computer and be like, 'Chronic fatigue syndrome' or 'Why don't you try to get out of bed, Avril, and just go play the piano?' or 'Are you depressed?'
"This is what they do to a lot of people that have Lyme disease. They don't have an answer for them, so they tell them. ... 'You're crazy,'" said Lavigne.
Lavigne said she was bedridden for five months trying to get her health under control and maintaining a low profile,
according to Yahoo News. She first started talking publicly about her ailment in an April article in
People magazine.
"I could barely eat, and when we went to the pool, I had to leave and go lie in bed," Lavigne told People, talking about when she first started to feel the disease coming on. "My friends asked, 'What's wrong?' I didn't know."
Lavigne described her experience fighting Lyme disease as "having the life sucked out of you." per People.
"I felt like I couldn't breathe, I couldn't talk and I couldn't move," she said. "I thought I was dying."
Lavigne said her mother moved in to help, along with her husband Chad Kroeger during breaks with his band Nickelback.
"There were definitely times I couldn't shower for a full week because I could barely stand," said Lavigne, adding that through that time she was cheered up by fans. "They were asking about me since I was MIA, so I mentioned to one fan directly that I wasn't feeling good. The get-well messages and videos they sent touched me so deeply."
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