Avril Lavigne on health scare: 'I thought I was dying'

Avril Lavigne is opening up about her serious health issues that had the 30-year-old "Complicated" singer's fans worried late last year.

In a conversation with fan account @AvrilMusicChart in December, Avril shared that she's been absent from the public eye recently due to "health issues," but didn't elaborate further. Instead, she simply asked fans to keep her in their prayers, which not surprisingly, alarmed plenty of people.

But in a new interview with People, Avril explains that she actually suffered from a severe case of Lyme disease. She believes she was bit by a tick sometime last spring. "I had no idea a bug bite could do this," Avril tells the magazine about the disease, whose early symptoms include fever, headache and feeling tired. "I was bedridden for five months."

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The "Sk8er Boi" singer says she was feeling lethargic and lightheaded for months before her diagnosis, but during a Las Vegas trip with her girlfriends for her 30th birthday last September, her symptoms became too much to ignore.

"I could barely eat, and when we went to the pool, I had to leave and go lie in bed," she recalls.

"I felt like I couldn't breathe, I couldn't talk and I couldn't move," she says about her experience with the infectious disease. "I thought I was dying."

The Canadian pop star has since been recovering at her home in Ontario, and is now "80 percent" better. Her mother moved in to take care of her, and her husband, 40-year-old Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger, also helped during his breaks on tour with the band.

Clearly, Avril needed them.

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"There were definitely times I couldn't shower for a full week because I could barely stand," she says. "It felt like having all your life sucked out of you."

She now counts the experience as a "wake-up call." "I really just want to enjoy life from here on out," she stresses.

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