Ronnie Wood "let go immediately" when he found out he got lung cancer.
The Rolling Stones rocker was diagnosed with the disease in 2017 and says he "knew it was going to be there" but he is lucky to be "strong enough not to let it be anywhere else in his body".
Asked if he was afraid, he told The Times magazine: "I let go immediately. I knew it was going to be there, because I smoked for England for 54 years. It was, ‘God, of course I’ve got cancer of the lung. But I haven’t got it anywhere else.’ I knew I was strong enough not to let it be anywhere else in my body."
Ronnie’s lung cancer was found during a routine medical with the band’s doctor, Richard Dawood.
He said: "I’ve had a fight with a touch of lung cancer. There was a week when everything hung in the balance and it could have been curtains, time to say goodbye. [Dr Dawood] came back with the news that I had this supernova burning away on my left lung. And to be totally honest, I wasn’t surprised. I knew I hadn’t had a chest X-ray since I went into Cottonwood [a rehab clinic in Tucson, Arizona] in 2002. He asked me what I wanted to do and I said: ‘Just get it out of me.’"
Ronnie – who gave up smoking before his and Sally’s twin daughters Gracie and Alice were born – was relieved when the cancer had not spread and he was able to undergo an operation to remove the cancer.
He explained: "I made up my mind that if it had spread, I wasn’t going to go through chemo, I wasn’t going to use that bayonet in my body. It’s more I wasn’t going to lose my hair. This hair wasn’t going anywhere. A week later they came back with the news that it hadn’t spread and I said, ‘Let’s get it out now.’"
Ronnie Wood let go of fear after cancer diagnosis
