Music community rallying around Naming the Twins after Robbie’s cancer diagnosis
While most people were celebrating the holiday season, Robbie Smith and Kathleen Glauser of the Nova Scotia folk duo Naming the Twins were dealing with devastating news: just days away from the start of the album launch tour for their brand new release, Sing the Winter Away, Robbie was admitted to hospital in Yarmouth and diagnosed with incurable cancer.
Now, friends, fans and members of the music industry are rallying to offer financial support.
“It is with profound sadness that we accept the diagnosis of stage 4, incurable cancer. HCC is hepatocellular carcinoma, a rare type of liver cancer usually found in people with liver disease,” Kathleen wrote Jan. 1 on the duo’s Facebook page.
“Many of you know that for years Robbie has lived with Primary Biliary Cirrhosis with his main symptom being extreme fatigue. The cancer has spread to his lung and his spinal column and up into the vena cava, which is the main vein that takes the blood from the liver up into the heart. Due to restricted blood flow, there is now a blood clot in the vena cava just outside his heart. It has been heart wrenching to watch Robbie struggle with so much pain as the nurses worked with the doctors to get the medications where they needed to be.”
Friends of the duo have launched a GoFundMe campaign to help the duo and Robbie’s family with the raft of expenses they now face as a result of his diagnoses.
For starters, they noted on the page, the Twins just launched a new album, which comes with a pile of expenses – expenses that they’ll struggle to pay off now that they’ve had to cancel their tour.
Secondly, they need money, they said, to provide for Robbie – whether it be his end-of-life-care and the costs of settling his estate or, preferably, the costs of supporting him through a long recovery.
As of my writing this, more than $12,000 has so far been raised.
You can contribute by clicking HERE.
