![\"Tina](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a52834c6e123f7f3be56b2fc14615a9d.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nTina Arena has given a firsthand account of a medical issue that led her to cancel a dozen shows.<\/p>\n
It is the first time the singer has opened up about the incident during which she was forced to fight for her life.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t feeling amazing,” Arena told ABC News.<\/p>\n
“But anyway, I’m kind of one of these people that keeps going, right? I’ll just work through it.”<\/p>\n
The ARIA Hall of Fame inductee and Member of the Order of Australia recipient was booked to perform in the United States, Europe and Australia in October 2023.<\/p>\n
But everything came to a halt when she developed kidney stones and contracted septicaemia, a life-threatening bloodstream infection.<\/p>\n
“I wake up \u2026 in ICU and I have this team of doctors around me,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I said, ‘Guys, I’m on the road in 10 days. How are we tracking?’ And they’re all laughing at me \u2026 They go, ‘You’re not going anywhere.'”<\/p>\n
Arena says, but for the blood transfusion she received, she may not be around today sharing her love of music.<\/p>\n
So, to honour blood donors, Arena has teamed up with singer-songwriter Ngaiire, who has her own stories to tell about recovering from illnesses.<\/p>\n
They have called the track the Unlikely Version, collaborating with artists and band members whose lives have been saved by blood, plasma, stem cells or platelet donations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tina Arena recording the Unlikely Version at Festival Hall in Melbourne. (Supplied: Drew Wheeler)<\/p>\n
“People are familiar with Sia’s version,” Arena said.<\/p>\n
“So, what was important for me to highlight with that song was I wanted to strip it right back, darling.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to get to the essence of what [the song] was about \u2026 I wasn’t interested in reinterpreting something as magical as Sia’s version.<\/p>\n
“I thought, ‘OK, here’s a beautiful piece of work. What can we bring to it?'”<\/p>\n
Arena, who will get back out on the road in October when she tours France, with plans to tour Australia and Asia next year, says blood donations are required with a degree of consistency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We all run the same colour when it comes to blood,” Arena said.<\/p>\n
“And we could all need it at some point in our lives.”<\/p>\n
‘Phenomenal gift’ of blood<\/p>\n
Ngaiire was diagnosed with a rare cancer called ganglioneuroblastoma at around the age of three and spent years in hospital.<\/p>\n
She had to have radiotherapy, chemotherapy, two major operations and blood transfusions.<\/p>\n
“I was just so sick as a child,” Ngaiire told ABC News.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t going to school anymore, so I literally was just bed-bound, [with] pipes coming in and out of my body.”<\/p>\n
![\"Ngaiire](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0260fe85ff1aa0d9eb5fc7f3af08c979.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Ngaiire says only one in 30 people donate blood. (Supplied: Drew Wheeler)<\/p>\n
Ngaiire is in remission, but the pain does occasionally resurface, including when she was pregnant with her first child, who is turning eight this month.<\/p>\n
\u00a0“Giving blood saves lives, but we don’t really think about what it means after that,” Ngaiire said.<\/p>\n
“No-one would have imagined that I’d be able to still have a child, have this career, build the life that I have, [with] the generosity of donors.”<\/p>\n
Ngaiire says Australian Red Cross Lifeblood needs 1.7 million donations of blood, plasma and platelets every year to fulfil the need in Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“[It] is wild that only one in 30 Australians donate [blood],” Ngairre said.<\/p>\n
“But also, one-in-three Australians will need some sort of blood transfusion, whether it’s plasma or platelets or blood.”<\/p>\n
She is encouraging people to think of the impact they can have by giving blood.<\/p>\n
“It’s giving someone that you might never ever meet in your life the chance to do the things that they might take for granted,” Ngaiire said.<\/p>\n
“Whether it’s just being able to catch a bus to work every day, to do the job that you’ve been working so hard at or \u2026 building a family, building a career like I have.<\/p>\n
“It’s honestly just the most phenomenal gift.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tina Arena has given a firsthand account of a medical issue that led her to cancel a dozen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,187481,257723,134,257720,257721,84799,257724,257725,257722],"class_list":["post-515363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-red-cross-lifeblood","tag-blood-donations","tag-entertainment","tag-ngaiire","tag-sia-unstoppable","tag-tina-arena","tag-tina-arena-health","tag-tina-arena-illness","tag-unlikely-version"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}