Ronnie Wood Reveals He Beat Cancer A Second Time During Lockdown

Ronnie Wood is once again cancer-free, the Rolling Stones guitarist revealed in a new interview with The Sun. After initially staving off lung cancer in 2017, Wood was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive small-cell cancer last year amidst coronavirus lockdowns. Now, however, the 73-year-old guitarist once again has “the all-clear.”

In a recent interview with the U.K. rag, Wood credited his paintings of his wife Sally, 43, and their four-year-old twins in keeping him strong. He also highlighted the skills he learned through sobriety in helping him keep a positive mindset.

“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,” Wood, who has been sober since 2009, 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. All I can do is stay positive in my attitude, be strong and fight it, and the rest is up to my higher power.”

This latest brush with cancer comes after Wood battled lung cancer in 2017. The guitarist underwent a five-hour surgery to have part of his lung removed before declaring he was cancer-free in 2018.

“They went, ‘Your lungs now are like you’d never smoked’ and I went, ‘How is that for a get out of jail free card?'” Wood recalled in his 2019 documentary, Somebody Up There Likes Me.

During lockdown, which halted the Stones’ No Filter Tour, Wood delved into his love of painting. Back in August 2020, he staged an exhibit of his artwork and now is selling 500 prints of his piece “Affirmation I” to support Turn Up For Recovery, a sobriety program founded by Eric Clapton‘s wife Melia McEnery which supports Slowhand’s Crossroads Treatment Centre in Antigua. The painting bears Wood’s mantra that he developed early on in sobriety, “When I take care of myself I can achieve anything.”

“‘Keep it positive’. ‘When I take care of myself, I can achieve anything’ says so much and it’s true,” Wood said. “That is something I can live by.”

Visit Wood’s website to browse his collection of visual artwork and purchase a print of “Affirmation I”.

[H/T The Sun]