I want to update you on my health. As I said when I somehow made it past the call screener and called into my own program a few weeks ago, the first thing to tell you is I feel fine. But let me start by explaining where my problems began.

The lung cancer I have involves the mutation of a gene that occurs in 1 to 5 percent of lung cancer patients. Ordinarily that would be very bad news, because it might mean there’s no medicine or targeted treatment. Turns out it’s the exact opposite. It was good news, because there is a clinical trial of a combination of chemo drugs that has been very successful in attacking this particular gene mutation in melanoma cancers.

So I went into a clinical trial with full knowledge that it was a Phase 2 trial. I had every option that every cancer patient has ever had presented to me by numerous doctors in numerous places. I chose what happened. This Phase 2 trial involves targeting with two different drugs the mutation that has caused my Stage 4 lung cancer. 

Everything was going along fine. The first four weeks we were all feeling great. Doctors had warned Kathryn and me that the side effects could be pretty bad — nausea, vomiting, fatigue. But none of that happened to me. 

Then I began to find it very difficult to walk. My muscles in both legs began to retain fluid and swell up incredibly, to the point that I could barely walk in the hotel room where we stayed during treatment. I needed a wheelchair. But I kept taking the chemo drugs, thinking this would be something I could get past. I didn’t get past it. I developed a 102° to 103° fever, which was also on the list of possible side effects.

After about five weeks on this stuff, it all just hit me. I was unable to get out of bed. When they asked me to describe the pain I said, “Imagine you’ve been sedentary for a year and then one day you go to the gym and do a strenuous two-hour workout. You know how you feel the next day, your muscles are filled with lactic acid and you can barely move? That’s what it’s like for me, times five.” They said, “Oh, okay,” taking notes.

I was not given anything for it. We just kept going with the treatment, hoping it would be something my system would metabolize and move beyond, but it didn’t. I got a blood clot in the left calf and damage to my right eye. It got bad enough that we had to pull the treatment. I began taking steroids to reverse the effects of the chemo drug. Here’s the irony, folks. The chemo drugs were working. I’m not going to go into detail about how we know, but they were working so well that the doctors wanted me to continue.

“I can’t do this,” I told them. “I can’t work. I can’t think. There’s just no way.” It’s the old dilemma that cancer patients have. You have to balance quality of life versus length. So I suspended the treatment as we looked at alternatives. I had to get the swelling down and the pain taken care of. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything but talk to you from a phone, in a limited way. I made it very clear that the only place I really want to be during all this — aside from at the side of my lovely wife, Kathryn — is in the radio studio.

And so I am. I’m having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. You might ask, how can that be? Well, because I’m doing what I was born to do, and I love being with you each and every day I can. I love the opportunity. I relish it. I was in misery those weeks I missed. I was wracked with guilt at not being on air. I’ve been so glad to be back and just feeling normal. It might be short-lived. Plan B is being implemented, and I might start feeling like crap again, but not consistently. And not as bad.

Look, folks, it is what it is. But I’ve got a respite here where I’m feeling great, and it’s great to be back. I never, ever take that for granted.

So the news is good. I vowed not to become a cancer patient, either in my life — as much as I can avoid it — and certainly not on my program. But to give you the overall big picture, I am feeling very good. The second phase has not resulted in fatigue or nausea, knock on Formica. I know there are millions of you praying along with me, and I think the prayers are working. God bless you,