The musician, who was suffering from abdominal discomfort saw a doctor in the winter of 2009, and after a series of tests, he was diagnosed with cancer.
"We were told it was stage four cancer, but we didn't believe that Ronnie wouldn't make it, because Ronnie was a very strong person,"Wendy told U.K.'s Planet Rock digital radio station in a new interview (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "And we went to Houston to MD Anderson [Cancer Center] for his chemo treatment, and we would say, 'We're killing the dragon.' We called it the 'dragon,' and we said, 'We're killing the dragon.'Ronniedidn't suffer a lot. He did his chemo treatments. And I didn't think he was gonna die. I [thought] he was gonna beat it.
According to Wendy, a number of Ronnie's closest friends and associates got to see him one final time before he died on May 16, 2010.