Twenty seven years ago, on February 2, 1998, Marie Keating passed away following a battle with breast cancer at the age of 51.
Her family set up the Marie Keating Foundation in her honour soon after, which aims to raise in the region of €2 million each year to maintain its cancer awareness and support services.
Ronan Keating has been a key part of raising awareness of the foundation, and on the anniversary of her death today shared a sweet tribute to his mother.
Read more: Marie Keating's life, legacy and charity foundation after she passed away due to cancer at just 51 years old
Read more: Jack Keating 'wasn't surprised' by comments made about his dad Ronan by Louis Walsh
Posting to Instagram, Ronan shared a throwback photo of himself and his mum.
He said: "Miss ya mam. 27," with a broken heart emoji.
The snapshot showed happier times of a birthday with his mum bringing him a cake.
Speaking about his beloved mum previously, Ronan said: "In some ways it doesn’t feel that long ago that Mum passed, but in other ways it feels like an eternity ago."
“I have lots of wonderful and very strong memories – like her picking me up from the airport when I got home after travelling with Boyzone."
"Or the boys meeting at my house so she could make them breakfast before we headed off – her sausage sandwiches became a thing of legend. Mum always had a great way of making you feel like everything was going to be OK, no matter what it was."
Marie was diagnosed with breast cancer on Wednesday, 25th September 1996.
Two years previously, she had been diagnosed with what her doctor had called mastitis, a condition that causes inflammation and pain in the breast tissue. She had been told to take antibiotics and, if the symptoms did not go away, to come back.
Her symptoms did not go away but she did not go back to the doctor until it was too late. By then she had a very large breast lump and her doctor immediately sent her to Beaumont Hospital for a biopsy.
Because her case had become so advanced, the doctor there told her: "Marie, I don’t even have to do a biopsy to know that this is cancer, but we will."
She underwent a full mastectomy, and started chemotherapy a few weeks later.
In September 1997, Marie was given the ‘all clear,' but by that same October, she started to have back pain and she returned to the hospital once more. Her doctor did an MRI and the results showed that she had three spots of cancer on her spine.
Marie finished her radiotherapy in January 1998. However, unfortunately the treatment was not successful and Marie lost her very brave battle to breast cancer on 2nd February 1998.
For more information on breast cancer, please see the HSE Breast Check resource HERE. You can support the Marie Keating Foundation HERE.
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