“I Thought That Was the Night I’d Lose My Mom Forever”: René-Charles Angélil Breaks Silence on Céline Dion’s Devastating Battle with Stiff-Person Syndrome
At 3:42 a.m. on a rainy night in Las Vegas, 24-year-old René-Charles Angélil received the phone call every child dreads. His mother, the legendary Céline Dion, had collapsed in her penthouse suite, unable to breathe or move, her body seized in a violent, unrelenting spasm. What he witnessed in the hours that followed would change their lives forever.
René-Charles says he has never felt more helpless than when he saw his mother rigid like a statue on the marble floor.
“I dropped to my knees and tried to hold her, but her muscles were locked so tight I was scared I’d hurt her more,” he reveals in an emotional interview with People. Paramedics arrived within minutes, but Céline remained conscious yet completely paralyzed, tears streaming down her face as she whispered, “Je suis désolée, mon ange” (“I’m sorry, my angel”) to her firstborn son.
In December 2022, Céline publicly revealed her diagnosis of stiff-person syndrome (SPS), a rare, incurable neurological disorder that causes progressive muscle rigidity and excruciating spasms.
For years she had hidden the symptoms, canceling shows and retreating from the world while doctors searched for answers. René-Charles, however, had been watching his mother suffer in silence since he was a teenager. “She’d smile for the cameras, then go home and cry in pain for hours,” he says. “I felt guilty for every concert I begged her to do.”
The night of the crisis marked the moment the disease almost took everything.
The spasm was so severe it triggered respiratory failure. In the ambulance, René-Charles held the oxygen mask over his mother’s face while singing “Because You Loved Me” softly in her ear—the first song she ever sang to him as a baby. “I kept telling her, ‘Mom, stay with me. The world still needs your voice, but I need it more.’”
Since that terrifying evening, René-Charles has become his mother’s full-time protector, advocate, and caregiver.
He moved back into her Las Vegas home, learned to administer emergency muscle relaxants, and sits with her through therapy sessions that often leave her sobbing from pain. “There are days she can’t even hold a glass of water,” he shares. “The woman who used to hit high F-sharps for fun now celebrates being able to walk ten steps without falling.”
Watching the strongest person he knows become fragile has forced René-Charles to grow up overnight.
He postponed his own rap career (under the name Big Tip) and turned down major record deals to be at her side. “Music will wait,” he says firmly. “My mother won’t.” Every morning he helps her with painful stretching exercises; every night he reads fan letters aloud because the messages give her strength when medication cannot.
Céline’s twins, Eddy and Nelson, now 15, have also rallied around their mother, but René-Charles carries the heaviest weight as the eldest.
He was the one who insisted she film the raw documentary I Am: Céline Dion, believing the world needed to see the truth over perfection. When critics called the film “too vulnerable,” he fired back on Instagram: “You try smiling when your body is attacking itself every second.”
Recent months have brought cautious hope: new treatments have reduced the frequency of Céline’s spasms by nearly 60%.
She has even begun vocal exercises again, dreaming of a return to the stage—not for fame, but to prove SPS will not silence her forever. René-Charles records every tiny victory on his phone: the day she laughed without triggering a spasm, the afternoon she managed to hug both twins at once.
Through it all, their mother-son bond has become the most fans’ source of inspiration.
In a heartbreaking Instagram post that has been liked over 4 million times, René-Charles wrote: “You gave me life twice—first when I was born, second every day you choose to fight this monster. I need to be by your side… no matter what. Je t’aime pour toujours, maman.”
As Christmas nears, the Dion-Angélil family is preparing a quiet celebration at home. Céline, though frail, plans to sing one verse of “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” with her children—the first time her voice will be heard publicly in over three years. René-Charles says simply hearing her try is already the greatest gift.
In the face of an illness that has stolen so much, one truth remains unbreakable: the little boy who once stood on stage holding his mother’s hand during “Because You Loved Me” is now the man holding her up—proving that love, in its purest form, can be stronger than any diagnosis.
