EIB Family,

13 Dec 2021

Every day I wake up, and the first thing I do is thank God that I did. Just waking up is a blessing. I know many of you are praying daily. I believe those prayers are sustaining me, and I pray for the energy to be able to be behind the golden eib microphone.

But folks, I have to be honest. I do not have the energy I used to have. I didn’t realize until I got sick how much physical and mental energy doing my radio program for three hours the way I do it, with no guests, takes. People say, “What? You’re sitting on your butt for three hours.”

Yeah, but my heart rate skyrockets. My caloric burn is the highest of the day, and the mental aspect of it — the performance pressure, the compunction I feel to do as well as I can every day to meet and surpass your expectations — creates demands. Now I’m fully aware of my energy limitations, and it’s why I told you on the air that at any moment we might need to start rolling a best-of show. I hope that that doesn’t happen. But I do feel the need to keep you informed.

As to how the treatment’s going, I have no idea. I’m still here, and that’s all that’s important. I guess the most accurate thing to say is that these are extremely challenging times for me medically. Nothing that millions of you haven’t gone through or aren’t going through. And those of you who have, you understand.

This current wave of treatment, I have to tell you, is kicking my ass. Nothing is happening that I haven’t been warned about. It’s the price you pay when you make the decision to do treatment to try to prolong your life.

There are good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks. You hope the good days, the good weeks, are trends, and you hope the bad days, the bad weeks, are one-offs. When I’ve got a good day I’m going to make the most of it, and get behind the microphone. It’s kind of like banking those days.

The impact on the tumor in this cycle is not expected to be significant. It’s supposed to take a little longer. One particular kind of treatment that works in 97 percent of patients did not work in me, because of a 1 percent mutation I have that led to my lung cancer in the first place. That mutation is theorized to nullify the second phase of treatment. I’m hoping that the current cycle does its magic and starts working on the tumor.

Meanwhile, my intention is to be behind the golden eib microphone as often as I can. The reality is, the day is going to come when I’m not going to be able to. I don’t know when that is — and I’m hoping that it is months, years, away. But any chance to do the show I’m going take, because it is one of my primary loves in life — and you in my audience are the reason this love has been so extraordinarily happy and successful.

Plus, I want to talk about all this rotgut going on out there. By the way, with so much of it, your host is being validated as being 100 percent correct!

So I have this given set of circumstances, and I have to adapt to them and part of the adaptation is being honest with myself about what I can and can’t do. More than one type of treatment is being thrown at me. My shortness of breath has been reduced, and that’s a big deal. My faith is solid, and I know how many of you are engaged in prayer for me. In fact, I pray every night to God not to disappoint you, that your prayers be answered. I do it in a respectful way!

Chemo is a pain. It’s a dastardly thing. You just have to accept that when it’s working sometimes there’s a price to pay for it, and you deal with it. And I would be lost; I literally would be unable to process this as reasonably as I’m able to without Kathryn leading the way through this. So I’ve been very fortunate, folks. Like I told you, I now understand why the great Lou Gehrig, announcing he had als and was retiring from the New York Yankees, said, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” I don’t mean to compare myself to Lou Gehrig. I’m saying I understand exactly what he meant. It’s because of the people who love you.