A Bittersweet Divorce, a Brutal Health Crisis and a Truly Bizarre Conspiracy Theory

It was 2014 and the pop star, a year into her whirlwind second marriage to Nickleback frontman Chad Kroeger, was busy touring in support of her self-titled fifth album, released in November the year prior. And the Canadian was feeling uncharacteristically unwell and could not figure out why. 

She visited doctor after doctor, presenting them with the same thing: "I'm achy, I'm fatigued, I cannot get the f--k out of bed," as she recalled to Billboard in October. "What the f--k is wrong with me?" Their conclusions? Dehydration and exhaustion.

But when the tour ended, taking the apparent root cause for her diagnoses with it, things only got worse. By October, during a trip to Las Vegas with girlfriends to celebrate her 30th birthday, she was almost entirely unable to participate in the simplest of activities. 

"I could barely eat, and when we went to the pool, I had to leave and go lie in bed," she told People in 2015 "My friends asked, 'What's wrong?' I didn't know."

But when one friend's intuition brought her to Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Hadid, who knew a thing or two about battling a mystery illness and, in turn, gave Lavigne the number of a specialist, the pop-punker finally got the answers she'd been longing for: She was suffering from a severe case of Lyme disease. 

"It was a relief," she told The Guardian in January "I was like: 'OK, now I can at least start treating something.'"

And then, as she told Billboard? "I was in bed for f--king two years."





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