The Cure keyboardist Roger O’Donnell was diagnosed with cancer last year.
The British musician, 68, announced Sunday that a biopsy in September 2023 determined that he had “a very rare and aggressive form of lymphoma.”
O’Donnell said in an Instagram post on the first day of Blood Cancer Awareness Month that he “ignored the symptoms for a few months” before he received the “devastating” diagnosis.
“Ive now completed 11 months of treatment under some of the finest specialists in the world and with second opinions and advice from the teams that had developed the drugs I was being given,” O’Donnell explained. “I had the benefit of the latest sci fi immunotherapy and some drugs that were first used 100 years ago. The last phase of treatment was radiotherapy which also was one of the first treatments developed against cancer.”
“Im fine and the prognosis is amazing,” he said. “The mad axe murderer knocked on the door and we didn’t answer.”
O’Donnell went on: “Cancer CAN be beaten but if you are diagnosed early enough you stand a way better chance, so all I have to say is go GET TESTED, if you have the faintest thought you may have symptoms go and get checked out. Lastly if you know someone who is ill or suffering talk to them, every single word helps, believe me I know.”
He went on to thank his “rockstar” doctors, nurses and technicians, ad well as his family and friends and his partner Mimi.
“Sometimes its harder to be on the other side of this…” he wrote to conclude his post.
In a second post, O’Donnell shared a black-and-white picture of himself posing with the caption, “The hair isn’t out of choice hahahah.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, lymphoma is a type of blood cancer with symptoms including fever, night sweats, fatigue, itchy skin, swelling of lymph nodes, weight loss and more.
Types of treatment include chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and CAR-T cell therapy.
Last year, O’Donnell sat out of The Cure’s Latin America tour because of “health reasons” that were unspecified at the time.
“We are sure you will join with us in wishing him the speediest of recoveries,” the band said in a statement.
O’Donnell joined The Cure in 1987, nine years after the band formed.
He left the group in 1990 and then in 2005 before rejoining again in 2011.
O’Donnell has also put out several solo albums, his most recent being 2022’s “7 Different Words for Love.”
