Rod Stewart has opened up about a terrifying health diagnosis that made his “palms go cold” and left him feeling “fearful” and “vulnerable”.
In his 2012 book, ‘Rod: The Autobiography’, the Maggie May singer explained how it all began when he visited Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, US, for a routine health check.
Rod, who thought he was as “fit as a butcher’s dog”, underwent a number of tests and then sat in the waiting room, but the doctor called him into his office as something had been detected on his thyroid gland.
He wrote: “The following day, I went back to the hospital and underwent a biopsy. Under a local anaesthetic, part of the affected area was removed using a needle and taken away for analysis.
“And the day after that, I got a call at home, which I took standing up and which made my palms go cold. The results of the tests indicated that the ‘something’ on my thyroid gland was a malignant growth: cancer.”
Rod, who said that this type of news will “really do it to you”, admitted that he was “fearful” and “vulnerable to a degree” that he’d never felt before.
Only two days later, he returned to the hospital for surgery, with Rod checking in as “Billy Potts”, a reference to the names of his dogs, to avoid the press.
He revealed that the four-hour surgery meant that the knife would have to come within a fraction of an inch of his vocal cords, so “any slip” would spell an end to his career.
The operation proved successful and the singer didn’t require chemotherapy, meaning he was in no danger of losing his hair. Humorously, he described this eventuality as a career threat “second only” to losing his voice.
Despite this, Rod explained on Loose Women in 2021 that he did indeed lose his voice before adding that he can no longer “stay up all night, get drunk and go mad and still have a voice” and he must now “protect” it.
He said at the time: “I had a touch of thyroid cancer, it was over and out within 10 minutes. I don’t want to pretend I fought cancer for months and months. It was really easy to get rid of, but I did lose my voice totally gone.”