'Love will prevail' — Cork musician with stage 4 cancer aims to raise funds for album

Their Kickstarter campaign offers a range of options from a hard copy of the album for €20 to a songwriter workshop which will take up to 20 people

Áine O'Gorman (left) and Victoria Keating (right) have been composing and performing together since they met while studying music in University College Cork.

A Cork musician diagnosed with aggressive stage 4 cervical cancer has started a fundraising campaign to help get her album made.

Victoria Keating and her songwriting colleague Áine O'Gorman have raised more than €6,000 of their €8,000 goal, at the time of publication. The fundraising campaign ends on July 8.

The pair have been composing and performing together since they met while studying music in University College Cork. Having the album to concentrate on has been a lifeline for Ms Keating, who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer on May 9.

"It’s so important to have a focus that is not cancer. To have a project, to be doing something useful that you get sink your teeth into," she said.

Her oncologist told her that treatment—aggressive rounds of immunotherapy and chemotherapy—would not cure the cancer but could “put it to sleep”. And stopping its growth may give Ms Keating time to benefit from any future potential cure, she said.

“I had all the emotions from A to Z. I’m a very positive person but I said to my sister who was with me, ‘I just want to be here for my kids.’"

Ms Keating qualified for immunotherapy, which uses the immune system to fight cancer by helping it recognise and attack cancer cells, in conjunction with chemotherapy. And the treatment is already working, she said.

Tumours had made sitting down painful, but after two sessions, they shrank enough to allow her to sit down again.

“I’m in the very privileged position of having my parents looking after me. They picked me up and took me home after the hospital. I had no idea how flattened I’d be after treatment. I thought of all the other women who have to do this alone.

“I was first diagnosed last year in May/June. I was given a course of treatment and told it was curable. I had radiotherapy, chemotherapy, brachytherapy therapy [a type of internal radiation therapy].

My post-treatment scan in December was clear, then in May, they told me I had stage 4. It was a huge shock.

“The care I’ve got from nurses has been amazing. The women who step up to the plate and form a ring around each other at times like this incredible. The treatment is tough. I’m floored. But we need to have fallow times.

“I’m choosing love over fear. Love will prevail.“

"Áine figures if I can stick around long enough, they’ll find a cure. She’s been amazing, you figure out the extent of your friendships when something like this happens."

The Kickstarter campaign offers a range of options from a hard copy of the album for €20 to a songwriter workshop which will take up to 20 people, and teach the group to write a song with a performance at the end.

At €500, it would make a great hen party activity or memorable afternoon with friends, Ms Keating and Ms O'Gorman said. Ms O’Gorman said that they had started recording the album before Ms Keating’s recent diagnosis.

“It was our first day in the studio when she got her scan," Ms O Gorman said.

“We had all these plans. We’ve written a song for the Eurovision next year, we were making an album together. The diagnosis was such a tough thing to happen in the midst of all these plans.

It’s hard to get your head around it. I thought ‘let’s get this album done and have something to focus on'.

“The songs we write are steeped in our own personal experiences and deal with topics we feel strongly about. We have written songs about narcissists, the menopause and the rise of fascism.

“We spent a lot on recording the album already so some of the money raised can pay Vickie back for that and help her cover her costs now," she added.

You can donate on Kickstarter.