Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood has revealed that he fought his second battle with cancer during lockdown.
The music legend thought he had won the fight in 2017 when he beat lung cancer, but he was diagnosed with rare and aggressive small-cell cancer. Wood opened up about his private struggle in an interview with The Sun.
"I’ve had cancer two different ways now," he said. "I had lung cancer in 2017 and I had small-cell more recently that I fought in the last lockdown."
Small cell cancer commonly arises within the lung. According to Cancer.Net, if small-cell lung cancer is localized, the five-year survival rate is 27%. For regional SCLC, that number drops to 16%. If the cancer has spread to another part of the body, the five-year survival rate is 3%. Wood is beating the odds.
"I came through with the all-clear," he told The Sun.
Wood previously attributed his lung cancer to a heavy smoking habit, which he managed to kick in 2016. In a health update a year after his lung cancer diagnoses, he explained that doctors had discovered a "supernova burning away on my left lung," according to Rolling Stone. Wood was lucky that the cancer had not spread. If it had, the outcome would have been very different.
"If that had happened it would have been all over for me," he said, adding that he did not require chemotherapy.
"If your body is riddled with cancer, it’s a losing cause. Luckily, all mine was contained within the left lung and I was fortunate ... There was none in the rest of my body so I didn’t require chemo," he said.
Speaking with The Sun, Wood added that a large part of his recovery came down to faith.
"I’m going through a lot of problems now, but throughout my recovery, you have to let it go. And when you hand the outcome over to your higher power, that is a magic thing," he said. "That brings you back to the Serenity Prayer: ‘Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change’. That’s incredible. What will be will be, it’s nothing to do with me."
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Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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