KUALA LUMPUR, February 29 — Malaysian rocker Datuk Awie has revealed that 2021 was a difficult year for him after being diagnosed with kidney cancer.
As the nation faced the height Covid-19 and numerous lockdowns, the 55-year-old Wings’ frontman shared that he had to go undergo an operation to remove the cancer.
Awie or his real name Ahmad Azhar Othman made the revelation on local radio station Kool 101 via their Pagi on Point segment that this was after he was told by doctors who noticed ‘something suspicious’ in one of his kidneys’ and said they might have to remove one of his kidneys.
“My heart sank. I thought to myself, this is it, my time is almost up.
“It took a while to sink in and I told my doctor I wanted to get a second opinion from another doctor.
“So I went to another hospital and they told me that it was 95 per cent confirmed to be cancer,” he said.
Four months later, after being persuaded by his wife, Awie decided to undergo the operation.
Thankfully, he did not need to remove his whole kidney as the specialist was able to remove the 2.7 centimetre tumour from his kidney.
He added that as he was recovering from the kidney operation, he tested positive for Covid-19 just a few weeks later. He said his family, his wife and child had to be quarantined as well at a hospital for nine days.
Awie admitted that getting back to singing was particularly hard, suffering from long Covid symptoms.
“Covid-19 really made it hard and it’s not just me, even Datuk Siti Nurhaliza and Datuk M.Nasir were experiencing the same thing, we all were having a hard time going back to singing.
“When I went for my check-up at that time, my mouth was filled with white spots which are one of the long Covid symptoms and I needed to clear out the spots before being able to go back to singing.
“I couldn’t even scream and I thought at that time, this is it, the ‘Awie’ era is coming to an end,” he said.
Through the help of modern and traditional medicines as well as countless sessions of practices, he managed to brave through it.
He added that he usually does not like to share details about his personal life and only did so with the ones closest to him.
Awie has since been performing again with Wings with their latest show, Wings the Rock Emperor: Penang Chapter, taking place at Spice Arena, Penang on February 24 .
