Majella and Daniel O’Donnell spoke about their experience with breast cancer in the RTÉ Guide's special pink edition in aid of Breast Cancer Awareness.
When I met Daniel first I never thought in a million years that we would end up together,” says Majella O’Donnell. “But for some reason we work and I’m mad about him.” She then gives her husband’s hand a squeeze and Daniel O’Donnell smiles: the cat that got the cream.
Yet it has not been all sunshine and lollipops. In her 2014 memoir, It’s All In The Head, Majella O’Donnell documented the highs and lows of her life, including her wedding to O’Donnell (November 2002), and coping with depression and her diagnosis with breast cancer in July 2013.
“When the doctor said ‘cancer’, I just squashed Daniel’s hand and said, ‘Oh!’”
“I then asked: ‘Where do we go from here?’ But I don’t think that I ever really took it on board that I had cancer. If I did, I might have gone off my head. I cried just one night and thought ‘Oh my God!’ but my make-up is such that I don’t allow myself to feel sorry for myself. So after that night I cried, I thought: ‘Oh come on, pull yourself together.”
Looking back today, she sometimes wonders how she got through it. “Some days I’d say to myself, ‘Majella, this is a life-threatening illness and you could die.’ So I’d go (she slaps her face) and say ‘WAKE UP!’ But maybe it was a good thing that I didn’t really fully take it on board and just got on with it. Double mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy and so on.”
Her husband wanted to put his career on hold until all was OK. “But Majella immediately dispelled that thought,” says Daniel.
“Her belief was that if I stopped working the cancer would be dictating our life, whereas if I continued touring we would just be getting on with life. But when you hear ‘cancer’ you do think that this could be the end of the line.”
You can read the full interview with Majella and Daniel in this week's RTÉ Guide. On sale now!
