I’ve been overwhelmed with countless emails and inquiries you have sent wishing me well and wanting a status report on my health. As I’ve said, I just don’t like to talk about it because I’ve vowed not to be a cancer patient on the radio. But I know you’re concerned, so it is time to provide a brief and honest update.

It can feel like a roller coaster. From the moment you get the diagnosis, there’s a part of you that says, that’s it, life’s over — you just don’t know when. But when you get that diagnosis, you do what you can to prolong life; you do what you can to prolong a happy life. You measure a happy life against whatever medication it takes. At some point you can decide: this medication may be working, but I hate the way I feel. I’m not there yet. But it is part and parcel of this.

It’s tough to realize that the days when I do not think I’m under a death sentence are over. Now, we all are! We all know we’re going to die at some point. But when you have a terminal disease diagnosis with a time frame to it, that gives a different psychological and even physical awareness.

So my last treatment week I got some scans that did show some progression of cancer. Prior to that, the scans had shown we had rendered the cancer dormant. That’s my term for it. We had stopped the growth. It had been reduced, and it had become manageable. But there’s always the knowledge that can change and it can come back, because it is cancer. It eventually outsmarts pretty much everything you throw at it. This, of course, is stage 4 lung cancer. And stage 4 is, as they say, terminal.

So we have some recent progression. It’s not dramatic, but it is in the wrong direction. We have to tweak the treatment plan and the chemotherapy drugs — which we did, in hopes of keeping additional progression at bay for as long as possible. What to do now is keep it where it is or maybe have it reduce again. We’ve shown that is possible. If it happened once, it can happen again. So that’s the objective of the current treatment plan.

For those of you who have been paying attention to my ballgame analogy, I was rounding second base and I was chugging toward the objective: to get a home run, go all the way around the bases, go to home plate, and beat this. I was on the way to third, and I realized I wasn’t going to make it, I had to make a mad dash back to second. I slid in there, got into second safely, and that’s where I am: stuck on second base — fully committed, however, to stealing third and rounding towards home.

All in all, I feel very blessed. Some days are harder than others. I do get very, very tired now; I’m not going to mislead you. But I am extremely grateful to be able to come to the studio and maintain as much normalcy as possible. It’s still true: I wake up every day, and thank God that I did. I go to bed every night praying I’m going to wake up. It’s a blessing when you wake up. It’s a stop-everything-and-thank-God moment. And every day this results in me feeling more and more blessed, hearing from you, knowing that you’re out there praying.

Someone gave me good advice: “The only thing any of us are certain of is right now, today.” That’s why I thank God every morning. I try to make it the best day I can, no matter what. I don’t look too far ahead. I certainly don’t look too far back. I try to remain committed to the idea that what’s supposed to happen will happen when it’s meant to.

At the outset of this I told you that I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is of immense value, strength, confidence. That’s why I’m able to remain fully committed to the idea that what is supposed to happen will happen when it’s meant to. There’s some comfort in knowing that some things are not in our hands. There’s a lot of fear associated with that, too, but there is some comfort. It’s helpful to be able to trust and to believe in a higher plan.

In late January, when I got this diagnosis — folks, the kind of cancer I have, I’ve never publicized what it is, but let me just put it to you this way: it was hopeless. It was absolutely hopeless. I never thought I would see October. When October 1st hit on the calendar this year, I reminded myself of that.

When I was first told of my diagnosis, the doctor said if you don’t do anything, we’re looking at a couple of months. So there is no way back in January that I had anything but hope that I would still be alive on this day, and that I would be fully productive and working. I didn’t share that with anybody. But given that as a baseline, I’m kicking butt. And the future remains pretty good looking.

I’ve loved to point out that we all only get one life; we don’t get a do-over. But we actually get a do-over every day, if we choose to look at it that way. You do get the opportunity to fix what you think you might not have done so well the day before. But the fact that I have that opportunity, compared to where I thought I would be — go get “The Hallelujah Chorus” and have them start singing to me.

Rush photo: ©2020 Mario Tama/Getty Images