Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones has said he was ready to die after being diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year.
“There was a week when everything hung in the balance and it could have been curtains – time to say goodbye,” he revealed. “You never know what is going to happen.”
Wood, 70, opened up in an interview with the UK’s Mail on Sunday about finding out he had a cancerous growth on his left lung back in May.
“There was a week of tests,” he recalled. “They needed to know if it had set up encampments and spread to my lymph nodes. If that had happened it would have been all over for me.
“So there was this one week when I didn’t know what was happening. I was prepared for bad news but I also had faith it would be OK.”
Wood said he decided that if the cancer had indeed spread, he was not going to go through chemotherapy.
“I wasn’t going to use that bayonet in my body,” he said. “I wasn’t going to lose my hair. This hair wasn’t going anywhere.”
Wood underwent a five-hour operation to remove part of his lung and will have follow-up appointments with his doctor every three months.
“I was bloody lucky but then I’ve always had a very strong guardian angel looking out for me,” he said. “By rights I shouldn’t be here.”
Wood said he has been clean and sober for the past eight years and has stopped smoking.