By Greg Wilson | Fox News February 4, 2020
69-year-old conservative talk
radio host Rush Limbaugh says he was experiencing shortness of breath before
seeing doctors who discovered the issue.
Fans of Rush Limbaugh, who
announced Monday he has advanced lung cancer, may recall a gripping story
the talk radio king once shared from his childhood that would inspire him to
raise some $50 million to fight the very disease now stalking him.
Limbaugh, who held annual “cure-a-thons” for the Leukemia
& Lymphoma Society on his widely heard radio program from
1990-2016, told listeners four years ago how he became driven to help
fund cancer research. While a young boy, Limbaugh explained, he heard his
father, also named Rush, talking in the family’s Cape Girardeau, Mo.,
kitchen with a cousin named Rusby. The houseguest was a doctor and he was
stricken with cancer, his voice reduced to a rasp.
“And, they’re arguing over whether or not there will ever be a
cure for it,” Limbaugh recalled, “and I remember Rusby telling my dad, ‘Rush,
it’s never gonna be cured. Don’t you understand, Rush?’”
A short time later, Limbaugh said, his father told Rush and his
brother, author David Limbaugh, that
Rusby wanted them to have his dog. The father and two sons went to see Rusby
and pick up a basset hound they named Jason. Limbaugh recalled visiting a
rustic cabin in the woods, where the dying man told the elder Limbaugh he had
lost all hope.
“What does it matter, Rush?” Limbaugh remembered Rusby telling
his father. “I’m dying. Can’t you see, Rush? I’m dying.”
“And, he would cough up and spit something into a cup,” Limbaugh
told his listeners. “I’m 10 years old. I’m not... This is shocking, it’s scary,
it’s any number of things.”
In a grim twist, Jason would also die of cancer and be put
down just before Limbaugh left home at age 20 on a journey that would see him
land various radio jobs, work for the Kansas City Royals and then become the
man who virtually defined modern talk radio and political analysis.
With the infectious optimism that many of his 20 million
listeners have known well, Limbaugh in 1990 began devoting a portion of his
program, once a year, to raising money to fund a cure for cancer. Over the
years, he donated millions of dollars of his own money, generously matching the
contributions of his listeners. Leukemia & Lymphoma Society President and
CEO Louis DeGennaro said the man known to fans as "El Rushbo"
helped bring in approximately $50 million over 26 years.
“Mr. Limbaugh used his significant platform to raise awareness
about The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s mission to find cures while giving
hope and encouragement to many patients and families coping with a cancer
diagnosis,” DeGennaro said. “The funds raised through the Cure-a-thon have
helped LLS support research leading to today’s most promising blood cancer
treatments that have saved thousands of lives. All of us at LLS wish him a
positive outcome.”
Limbaugh said Monday he trusted his faith to get him
through the battle of his life.
“I told the staff today that I have a deeply personal
relationship with God that I do not proselytize about, but I do, and I have
been working that relationship tremendously,” he said. “I am, at the moment,
experiencing zero symptoms.”
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