Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh revealed Monday that he has been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and will be out for several days as he receives treatment.
“So, I have to tell you something today that I wish I didn’t have to tell you. It’s a struggle for me, because I had to inform my staff earlier today,” Limbaugh said Monday on his nationally-syndicated radio show, which he has hosted for 31 years. “I can’t help but feel that I’m letting everybody down with. The upshot is that I have been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.”
Limbaugh told his audience of about 27 million that he is currently experiencing “zero symptoms” but was suffering from shortness of breath last month, when he realized something was amiss.
The 69-year-old political commentator, who pioneered conservative talk radio in the late 1980s, added that he has a “deeply personal relationship with God that I do not proselytize about, but I do, and I have been working that relationship tremendously.”
“I’m sure that you all know by now that I really don’t like talking about myself and I don’t like making things about me,” Limbaugh said. “One thing that I know that has happened over the 31-plus years of this program is that there has been an incredible bond that had developed between all of you and me.”
“You know me, I’m the mayor of Realville,” he said. “This has happened and my intention is to come here every day I can, and do this program as normally and competently and expertly as I do each and every day because that is the source of my greatest satisfaction professionally, personally.”
Limbaugh is a New York Times best-selling author and also hosted a television show in the mid-90s.