Tool’s Maynard James Keenan shares emotional post about his wife’s breast cancer battle
Tool‘s Maynard James Keenan has shared an emotional post revealing his wife’s battle with breast cancer.
The frontman took to Instagram on her birthday yesterday (August 12) to explain what she has been through.
In the Instagram post, Keenan revealed that Jennifer Lei Li Keenan, first found a lump in November 2020, and was diagnosed on Christmas Eve that year.
“She didn’t collapse into a pile of self pity. She didn’t launch into an entitlement rage. She didn’t act out in any self destructive manner,” he said when his wife first learned of her diagnosis.
“Instead she asked the right questions, listened to her doctors, made a plan, and stuck to it. And when there were things she couldn’t do on her own, she asked for help.”
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He continued: “Before the chemo could take her hair, she cut it all off and had our friend Brooke make her a wig to match. And then she went to work. No one was the wiser.”
Keenan went to praise his wife adding: “She’s successfully navigated both the chemo and the surgery, and now begins the radiation. And all without whining or bitching. She is my rock. She is my muse. She is my ALL. Be like Jen. Happy Birthday, My Love. Cheers to this one and many more.”
It comes during a tough year for the frontman who has twice contracted coronavirus.
The frontman disclosed back in October that he was still suffering from lung damage after he tested positive for coronavirus in February 2020 while touring with Tool in Australia and New Zealand.
Keenan later revealed that he battled COVID-19 for a second time late last year after contracting the disease in mid-November “and ending up in the ER on December 1”.
“Ugly, ugly. Couldn’t breathe,” Keenan continued about his debilitating second experience of coronavirus. “I could barely put two words together without going into a coughing fit, you know? It ended up kind of also progressing into pneumonia.
“So, if I stayed in the hospital, they said: ‘Okay, we can keep you here, but you’re fighting 12 other people for a bed and a ventilator we don’t have, so what do you want to do?’ I’m like: ‘Well, I need to breathe and I need to sleep.’”
Keenan added: “So, you’re just treating symptoms at that point. There’s nothing you can do other than treat the symptom, so for a real cough medicine – not the crap over-the-counter [medicine] – and then like an inhaler and some antibiotics to fight the pneumonia, and strap the fuck in.”