Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir

by Toni Braxton

  In the next two days, I became even more fatigued. But I wanted to spend some time with the boys, so we gathered around our television upstairs to watch Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie. Halfway through the film, I felt a pressure in my chest—as if I was trying to walk forward while a three-hundred-pound football player was pushing me back. I made my way down the stairs, one slow step at a time, and I checked my blood pressure using an at-home monitor. It was high as hell—180 over 118. I chewed a couple of Tums (I thought my chest pain could be indigestion) and walked back up the stairs—but I was so frail that I had to stop and curl up right there at the top of the limestone staircase. “Keri,” I whispered, “I have to go to the hospital right now.” He rushed over, scooped me up, left the boys with the nanny, and sped off.

  The hospital was only two miles away—but it felt like two million. “You’re going to have to run these red lights,” I whispered to Keri. He shifted into high gear and flew through the next five intersections. Soon after, we pulled up to the front entrance of the ER and Keri helped me out of the car. As he went to park, I practically crawled my way through the glass doors. Do you remember how slowly Mr. Tudball from The Carol Burnett Show used to walk? Well, that’s how slowly I was walking.

  “May I help you?” a receptionist brusquely asked when he spotted me just inside the front door. I could barely talk because I was so out of breath, which is why I whispered something inaudible. “Is it your throat?” he asked, pressing me.

  “There’s an elephant sitting on me right now,” I finally managed to say loudly enough for him to hear. I placed my palm over my chest.

  Seconds later, a nurse put me in a wheelchair and rushed me off to an exam room. She checked my blood pressure, gave me some baby aspirin, and drew my blood. Soon after, the doctor came in. “Your troponin levels are elevated,” he said. “That could be the sign of a heart attack.” They later did an EKG, an echocardiogram, an MRI—the works. “Your blood work reads like you’ve had a heart attack—but your EKG doesn’t,” the doctor said. “I’m going to keep you in the hospital for a couple days to do more tests and to monitor you.”

  During my stay, a male nurse came in for what I thought was a routine check—but he instead had a question for me. “Someone from the Enquirer wants to talk to you,” he whispered. “Can you do an interview?” I stared at him in silence. I was on so much Ativan that I was barely even conscious—but I was awake enough to know that he was crossing the line. Apparently, someone from the Enquirer had agreed to pay this nurse if he could get me to talk. I immediately asked to be released from that hospital against the doctors’ orders. After I signed a slew of paperwork, I then left through a back entrance so I could avoid the paparazzi.

  My sister Tamar and her fiancé, Vince Herbert, who is a record company executive, came to see me. At the time, the two were planning their fall wedding, and they stopped by my place to check on me. My mother also flew in. “You don’t look good, T,” Tamar said. Vince called his friend Mel at Interscope Records; Mel recommended that I see Dr. Shapira, a specialist in Los Angeles. I agreed—but I thought we could all just take the short drive from Vegas over to L.A. “You need to fly, T,” Vince said insistently. “You’re too sick to make the drive.” So Keri packed my suitcase, and my mother stayed with the boys. When we got to the airport check-in, the security people didn’t even want to let me onto the flight because I looked so ill. That’s just how much of a mess I was. Keri had to call and get clearance from my doctor; a fax was sent to airport officials, and they confirmed that I was indeed on my way to see a specialist. The airport officials reluctantly let me onto the flight.

  When Dr. Shapira evaluated me, he said, “I can’t even believe they released you from the last hospital.” He’d only been planning to run some tests and then release me, but when he saw that my blood pressure was super high (200 over 122), he immediately admitted me to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. When Dr. Shapira noticed in my records that I’d previously seen Dr. Wallace, a rheumatologist in Los Angeles, he asked me why. “Because my white blood cell count was low,” I explained. So at that point, he decided to bring in Dr. Wallace to run some more tests on me, and one seemed to show that I had some kind of heart blockage. That’s why Dr. Wallace seemed to think I needed a heart transplant. “You have microvascular angina,” he told me. That news made me so hysterical that I had to be given an antianxiety medication. But after both of the doctors did some additional testing, they eventually ruled out the heart transplant and began considering other possibilities for what may be causing my condition.

  Two weeks later, Dr. Shapira and Dr. Wallace gave me their conclusion: “You have lupus—and it’s the kind that attacks your organs—and yours is attacking your heart.” What looked like a heart condition was really just a sign that my body was in a lupus flare-up. When I heard this, I was far more relieved than I was scared. At last, I had an answer.

  My diagnosis that day marked the beginning of my road to recovery—but it was also the end of my Vegas run. “You cannot do your show,” my doctor told me as he released me from the hospital. “That’s way too much singing and dancing around for five nights a week.” So between April and August 2008—the month that would’ve marked the completion of my contract with the Flamingo—I didn’t perform. All remaining shows were canceled and my room went dark.

  LUPUS IS A tough disease—and I chose not to reveal my diagnosis to the world right away. “If you tell people you have lupus,” my managers warned me, “you may not get work.” If people perceived me as too weak to work, I could have trouble getting record deals and acting roles. So right after the diagnosis, I kept my news to myself. Keri knew, of course, and so did my mother. But I waited awhile before I told everyone else. It was bad enough that they’d heard I’d had a heart scare; they didn’t also need to know that scare had turned out to be a life-threatening disorder.

  Once the doctors sent me home with a gazillion meds, I did a lot of my own research on my condition. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE is usually referred to as “lupus”) is a chronic autoimmune disorder that can affect any organ in the body. The immune system, which normally protects the body, forms antibodies that attack everything from the skin and the lungs to the joints, the kidneys, and even the brain. In my case, lupus affects my organs, and mostly my heart. One of the reasons lupus can be so hard to diagnose is because it often shows up in so many different forms—butterfly-like skin rashes, sore joints, renal failure, blood clots, angina, and chest pains, and even the kind of prolonged and unexplainable exhaustion I’d been experiencing for years. The condition is most common in females—and African-Americans, Asians, and Native Americans are particularly susceptible. More than 1.5 million Americans have the condition. Lupus has no known cure.

  My doctors believe that I may have had lupus as far back as my early twenties—and with each passing year, as I pushed myself to work longer and harder, my body became weaker. One of my uncles once lost his life to lupus—but because his lupus was medically induced, I never connected it to the symptoms I’d been having. Researchers still don’t know what causes lupus—and though they suspect that there could be a genetic predisposition, there’s no scientific proof of that. But here’s one thing they are certain about: Stress makes lupus worse. A big part of managing my lupus involves managing my pace and workload.

  My diagnosis further strained my relationship with Keri. Once I got out of the hospital, I again struck up the conversation—the one about his financial contribution. I wanted a real break. Keri did make an effort (for a time, he got into the real estate business, and after he made a sale, he once even paid my band’s salary for a week, which I thought was very kind of him). He also did some photography work for a short time. But the amount of money Keri could consistently contribute didn’t cover our family’s expenses.

  So I found some other ways to bring in money. That August, despite my doctor’s misgivings, I agreed to do the seventh season of Dancing with the Stars. Then in October, I signed
on with Atlantic Records to start on yet another album—my manager then, Randy Philips, thought that was a good idea. I had a couple possibilities on the table, but I went with Atlantic because I liked the CEO’s energy. In addition to needing income, I also wanted to squash some rumors that had surfaced. After I was admitted to the hospital, the whispers began that I was too sick to work—and I knew I had to get in front of that story.

  So just before I took the dance floor with my Russian partner, Alec Mazo, I announced to the world that I had microvascular angina. What I didn’t reveal is that my heart condition was connected to lupus, because the last thing I needed was for my new record company to lose confidence that I could deliver. That’s why I put on my dancing shoes and plastered on a smile—I wanted to make everyone believe that I was feeling just fine. I also had something to prove to myself: Even with lupus, I could live a full and fearless life.

  My rehearsals with Alec were between six and eight hours long every day. I pushed myself above and beyond. I brought along a nurse in case anything went wrong (I pretended she was my assistant), and she monitored my blood pressure during breaks. The doctor had put me on an anti-inflammatory drug called Relafen, which sometimes makes the mind go blank. I didn’t tell Alec I had lupus, but I did ask him to show me a few basic moves I could do if I ever got stuck. All things considered, I did fine. There were a couple mornings when I struggled to get out of bed because our practice sessions were so strenuous—but I bet a lot of the other dancers felt that way, too.

  Alec was an amazing dancer, but we didn’t always see eye to eye. He’s an atheist—and because I was feeling so emotionally raw at the time, it didn’t really help for me to spend most of my days around a person who didn’t believe in God’s existence. If I mentioned that I was about to say a prayer, for instance, he’d reply with a line like, “I don’t believe in prayer.” In the midst of everything I was going through, I was trying to reconnect with my spirituality—and Alec wasn’t someone who could help me do that.

  Even still, I enjoyed the daily workouts (I lost eight pounds!) as well as our live performances. From my first cha-cha-cha to my last West Coast swing, it was a lot of fun to be out on the floor. And to be honest, I was actually disappointed when I got voted off in the fifth week of the show—it kinda broke my heart. But the feeling was short-lived, because I accomplished what I’d set out to do: I waltzed right through my fear and danced myself back to life.

  Even before the world knew I had lupus, I discovered that there’s just one way to conquer it—one deep breath at a time. Even today, that’s my strategy. I have those moments when I’m feeling like the old me—energetic, exuberant, and ready to tackle my to-do list. I also have those moments when I’m feeling wiped out and a little disoriented. Yet each day, I wake up with an incentive that’s far more valuable to me than anything else: I want to be here as long as I can. For my family. For my loved ones. For myself.

  CHAPTER 19

  “How Did I Get Here Again?”

  Keri and I separated. By the time we officially announced that excruciating choice to the world in November 2009, we’d already made a private agreement: We would do everything we could to keep our sons’ lives normal. When two adults decide that their romance is over, that’s certainly painful—but for the children involved, that choice can bring emotional devastation. Keri and I care deeply for our boys—so we made a promise that even after we split, we’d always put their needs ahead of our own.

  As far as separations go, ours was pretty amicable. It wasn’t that we didn’t love each other anymore. Keri has always been my best friend. But some of the issues between us just put too much of a burden on our marriage. We found ourselves disagreeing more than we ever had, and our passion and connection leaked away a little at a time. Marriage is challenging—but when you also work with the person you’re married to, it can be an even bigger struggle. Just before Keri moved out, the two of us sat down with our boys. “Mommy and Daddy are going to separate,” we told them, “but you’ll still get to see both of us as much as you want.”

  We’ve lived by our promise to coparent. Even after we first separated in Atlanta, we stayed in the same house for a while. We now each have our own places in Los Angeles, and our kids spend time at both homes. Keri takes Diezel to school, then picks up Denim at the end of the day; after school, Keri and Denim often shoot some hoops. Once homework is done, the three will sometimes wrestle around on the floor, either at my place or at Keri’s home, which is close by. When I’m out of town for work, the boys stay with their father. Keri and I have also agreed that we’ll always take our sons on a vacation every year—with just the four of us. At some point down the line, if either Keri or I have a significant other in the picture, we’ll have to figure out how to take that into account. We just think it’s fair to give our kids the experience of having both their parents available. They didn’t choose to separate us—we did.

  As Keri and I brought our marriage to a tearful finish, I threw myself into my next album. When I’d arrived at Atlantic, Craig Kallman, the CEO, had first said he wanted me to do pop. But then the directors in A&R thought they should take me back to the sultry songs that I first became known for. The bottom line is that no one was quite sure how to package me, so we eventually decided on a pathway right down the middle: We’d start by appealing to my core audience with some classic Toni Braxton tracks, then we’d cross over to pop.

  I was excited about including a collaboration, which is why we called in Trey Songz. After several months in the studio, I’d recorded more than thirty tracks—and we narrowed that down to ten. In November 2009, my duet with Trey Songz, “Yesterday,” hit the airwaves. But when we discovered that a number of the other tracks were leaked over the Internet (including a couple of the planned collaborations), we pushed back the full record’s release date by a few months. That gave me time to go back into the studio and create more music. Pulse—my sixth studio album—finally came out on May 4, 2010.

  True story: During one of my heart scares, I met an elderly woman while I was in cardiac rehab. “What are you doing in here?” she asked me. “You’re so young.” I told her about my heart condition. “You know what?” she told me. “I’ve had four heart attacks. Four. You can’t be afraid. You can’t stop living.” As it turns out, that woman had just arrived back from enjoying a vacation with her boyfriend—a forty-year-old “younger man.” I don’t know that woman’s name, and I may never see her again, but she gave me something important that day—hope. The doctors had told me that I’d never be able to perform again, and her conversation was like a heartbeat, a pulse, that brought me back to life. So I named my album Pulse as a reminder of that hope. It was also the sign of a gradual comeback: The album debuted in the ninth spot on the Billboard 200 chart. Exhale.

  JUST AS PULSE was gathering steam, an issue arose that shifted the headlines—I was being sued. Back when I was hospitalized in Vegas and then confined to bed rest, I was forced to cancel the remainder of my shows at the Flamingo. Since I was the show’s producer, that meant I’d had to hire companies to provide services like lighting and flooring. But when my show was cut short, I could no longer pay those companies the full amount we’d contracted for—so one by one, each company served me with a lawsuit.

  At first, I thought I was on firm financial ground: I’d taken out a liability insurance policy that included coverage for event cancellation. But when the insurer eventually discovered that the underwriter hadn’t specifically listed my pericarditis condition in the policy, the insurance company declined to cover the expenses related to my show’s cancellation. In short, they got off on a technicality—and I was suddenly on the hook for millions.

  Over several months, I tried everything I could to negotiate some kind of settlement with my creditors. I used all of my earnings from Dancing with the Stars to hire lawyers who could work out a deal on my behalf. We fought and we fought—but in the end, it didn’t make much of a difference. I still had debts totaling i
n the millions and no way to pay them off. If I wanted to keep providing for my boys, I knew what I had to do. On September 30, 2010, in a Los Angeles court, I filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Again.

  Going broke is one thing—but doing so twice in front of the whole world makes the humiliation practically unbearable. I’ll be honest with you: When I filed for the second time, I felt dumb and dumber. It was as if I could hear the whole world shouting in unison, “We told you so!” I’d tried so hard to repair the damage from my first bankruptcy—only to find myself back in the same situation. After the 1998 filing, I couldn’t stop crying—but the second time around, my tears showed up in the form of fury. Even though I had no control over getting a heart condition or lupus, I was still so angry. A single question kept reeling through my head: How did I get here again?

  I became very sick—in part, that’s how I got here again. To those who see my second bankruptcy as confirmation that I’m indeed a reckless spender, I understand why it appears that way. That isn’t the truth—but trying to convince anyone of that just sounds like the second verse of another sad love song. So I’ll simply say this: I hate that it happened. I always will. I’m human, so even now, I’m working through the emotional fallout. But rather than wasting a lot of energy on regret or browbeating myself about the situation, I have chosen to look ahead. In fact, that’s really what my entire story is about—falling down, getting back up, learning from my missteps, and then moving forward. I’m still here. Still standing. Still breathing. And that means that I’ve been given the same gift that we all received when we woke up this morning—the opportunity to start fresh.