Singer Brian Kennedy has said he is looking to the future he will have once he has recovered from his upcoming cancer surgery, telling The Ray D'Arcy Show on RTÉ Radio 1: "I want to be around."
In a moving interview on Thursday, Kennedy told the host he will undergo an eight-hour operation on Monday for colorectal cancer.
"Well really it's the beginning of the end of a journey with cancer for the last two years," he said.
"I left no stone unturned, because that's the kind of person I am, in terms of alternative possibilities. But surgery is coming. It's coming next week."
Kennedy said that over the last two years the tumour in his rectum "just got a little bit thicker and therefore more difficult to treat" but that the cancer had not spread to other organs.
He acknowledged his fears and said that he felt too young to have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life because "obviously it changes everything".
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"But at the same time you just think, 'Look, but I want to be around'," he continued. "Ultimately, the survival technique kicks in more importantly than anything else.
"Look, I had a friend recently - you may have heard me talking about it before - I'm going to the celebration of his life on Saturday in London. He was 54 and he died almost instantly of a brain tumour, like within less than two months he was dead - from health to death. I have options. After two years I have an option like this. And I think that's a godsend. I really feel lucky, honestly I do, at this point...
"I'm looking forward to not being in discomfort. For there finally to be a close on this chapter, and then an opening to a brand new chapter of life living with colostomy."
Kennedy said he still has "a massive zest for life".
"There's part of me that still thinks, 'My God, I'm still able to get up onstage'. I drive all the time. I see my friends all the time. I do all kinds of things. I'm presenting my own show on Clare FM, ladies and gentlemen, that I've just recorded some of...
"But yes, it's not lost on me that some people are taken out like a light, and other people like me, for some reason... I don't necessarily have survivor's guilt or anything like that, but it's not lost on me that I've lost all these significant people along the way."
Having faced his own cancer diagnosis, and having lost his older brother Bap to cancer in 2016, Kennedy urged listeners who have health concerns to have them investigated.
"They're just worried and they're thinking, 'Oh no, I can't go near the doctor - it's mortifying.
"Just do. Just put the mortification to one side and find out what's really going on."
