[2023] Australië: Voyager - Promise #1

quote:

In September 2023, just as things were ramping up after Eurovision, I was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer that had spread so far around my body that chemotherapy, radiation and surgery were necessary.

Everything had been in the right place for Voyager. We were just about to commence a massive European tour, I was doing TV appearances and offers were coming in left, right and centre... but the cliff was nigh and we had to cancel it all and get used to a new normal; a normal of constant nausea, lesions on my vocal cords and loss of ability to sing, neuropathy in my fingertips which meant I couldn't play piano and a litany of other side effects too numerous and awful to list here..

After surgery, I managed to find hope between the fortnightly infusions of (very effective) poison and enjoy my life to the fullest.

I managed to maintain a semblance of normality to the outside world, to a world which wished me well, sent me gifts and prayed for me.

There's no remission for my cancer, which is a particularly nasty mutation. Late last year it spread even further because chemo stopped working... and so it's a matter of prolonging time and beating the odds with the wonders of modern medicine.... at the moment, a new therapy seems to be keeping it at bay (well, until we see at the next 3 monthly scan). You learn to live life differently, more fully if you can...

And here we are, in April 2025, surgery, 11 rounds of radiation and 33 rounds of chemo and counting.. BUT we have a new song.. can you believe it? I honestly did not think I would sing or play piano again and I cannot express how incredibly proud I am of this piece of music, crafted together with my beautiful, patient, incredible bandmates.

Since release, you have embraced this piece of music, both as a testament of my frequent struggle to maintain normality and as a way to relate it to your own rollercoasters of life. People have reached out from all around the world, saying they too feel the song speaks to their emotional peaks and troughs, their ailments or the suffering of a dear friend of family member. Many of us have seen better days, but it makes the good days between the bad so much more beautiful