Rush Limbaugh in 2012.Photo: AP Photo/Julie Smith
Conservative radio hostRush Limbaughsaid while on the air Monday that he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer last month and will miss some upcoming recordings because he will be receiving or recovering from treatment.
“I wish I didn’t have to tell you this and I thought about not telling anybody,” he saidon Monday’s show. “I thought about trying to do this without anybody knowing ‘cause I don’t like making things about me.”
Limbaugh said that he “first realized something was wrong on my birthday weekend,” on Jan. 12, and his diagnosis was later confirmed on Jan. 20.
“The worst thing that can happen is when there is something going on and you try to hide it and cover it up, it’s eventually going to leak and then people are going — ‘Why didn’t you just say it, why’d you try to fool everybody?’ ” he said Monday. “And it’s not that I want to fool anybody. It’s just that I don’t want to burden anybody with it and I haven’t wanted to.”
Reporter Doug TurnbulltweetedLimbaugh said on his show that he “had shortness of breath earlier last month, which led to [his] diagnosis.”
Limbaugh rose to national fame during the advent of conservative talk radio in the ’90s. His provocative style has drawnhis share of controversyin the past.
In 2010 hemarried Kathryn Rogers, his fourth bride, in Palm Beach, Florida, where an unlikely guest —Elton John— serenaded them.
On Monday, in keeping with his reputation as the “mayor of Realville,” he took a lighter tone in talking about his health.
“It is what it is,” Limbaugh told his listeners, adding, “So this has happened and my intention is to come here every day I can and to do this program as normally and as competently and as expertly as I do each and every day, because that is the source of my greatest satisfaction, professionally, personally.”
“We’re in this fight with you, Rush,” Liz wrote.
A rep for Limbaugh could not immediately be reached for comment.
source: people.com
