The Cure keyboardist Roger O’Donnell reveals lymphoma battle over past year
“I’m fine and the prognosis is amazing,” he wrote at start of Blood Cancer Awareness Month, “The mad axe murderer knocked on the door and we didn’t answer.”
By Daniel Kreps
The Cure’s longtime keyboardist Roger O’Donnell revealed Saturday that he has spent the past year fighting “a very rare and aggressive form of lymphoma,” but added he is now doing “fine and the prognosis is amazing.”
The musician announced his health scare on social media to coincide with September’s Blood Cancer Awareness Month, which arrives a year after O’Donnell was diagnosed in September 2023.
“I had ignored the symptoms for a few months but finally went and after surgery the result of the biopsy was devastating,” O’Donnell wrote.
“I’ve 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. 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.”
O’Donnell — who joined the Cure in 1987, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 2019, and performed live on the Cure’s North American tour last year before then-unspecified “health reasons” forced him to miss the band’s Latin American tour in November 2023 — opened up about his own cancer battle in an effort to encourage fans to get tested.
“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,” O’ Donnell wrote.
“I’m fine and the prognosis is amazing. The mad axe murderer knocked on the door and we didn’t answer.”