EXCLUSIVE: Wendy Williams Being ‘Left to Rot’ – Grim Reality of How Fallen TV Queen Could be Doomed to Stay Locked Away FOREVER Under Brutal ‘Life Sentence’ Conservatorship….See More

Worried Wendy Williams is desperate to escape her New York City assisted-living facility – which she has likened to a prison as she fights claims she’s suffering from dementia – but loved ones fear the troubled talk show legend may be locked away forever, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

“She’s climbing the walls and ready to be free yesterday,” a source told us. “But she isn’t allowed out until the medical reevaluation is complete, and that’s dragging on.”

They also warned: “It could take months or longer, and even then, who knows what they’ll say. It’s very upsetting for Wendy and everyone in her life that cares about her,” an insider said.

But on January 16, the longtime host of the defunct Wendy Williams Show gave a bleak view of her current life when she called in to the iHeart Radio program The Breakfast Club and declared: “I am not cognitively impaired – but I feel like I am in prison.”

Last year, Williams’ minders announced she was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia, a language disorder that makes it difficult to read, write and speak.

But a source previously told RadarOnline.com Williams’ family “doesn’t believe for one minute that Wendy is so debilitated that she needs to be shackled to a virtual prison, where she’s surrounded by old folks and has nothing to do but sit and stare out the window.”

Unfortunately, the insider added the family has made no progress in their efforts to free her.