told Shamrock Rovers TV<\/a>.<\/p>\n“I had to do some different tests, blood tests and I was in the hospital for five or six hours waiting to hear, and was kind of told that it was looking it was going to be something like gastroenteritis because my bloods weren’t too bad at the time.”<\/p>\n
However, a CT scan later that evening would give a clearer picture of what he was facing.<\/p>\n
“I was diagnosed with a form of testicular cancer,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was a tumour found in my stomach that was quite a large mass which triggered the pain that I was experiencing, which led to an excruciating pain in my stomach for the whole day even with the painkillers and everything they put me on. The pain just wasn’t easing.”<\/p>\n
O’Neill subsequently underwent 28 intense sessions of chemotherapy until early January. A scan the next month confirmed the all-clear and he is now on the path towards resuming his career.<\/p>\n
“Now I’ve got the all-clear, I’m back doing some running, back doing a lot of individual training,” he said. “I’m a footballer again now. This my job. I want to get back on the pitch. I think it’s important people know that. This isn’t going to define me.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I’ve won the battle with the cancer and I’m back to my job now.<\/p>\n
“I’m not naive that I’m ready to play against Pat’s or against Bohs next week. I’m not ready. My body’s not ready. I still have a few weeks, couple of months to go.<\/p>\n
“But my goal is now and has been, since I was diagnosed, to get back on the pitch. That hasn’t changed and I’m in a really good place now mentally.”<\/p>\n
O’Neill has won five League of Ireland titles and two FAI Cups since joining Shamrock Rovers in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shamrock Rovers midfielder Gary O’Neill has revealed that his absence from playing action since October was due to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-394088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}