Rush Limbaugh is expressing “great gratitude” on his last radio broadcast of 2020 to all of his listeners and supporters of “The Rush Limbaugh Show” as he battles lung cancer.
“I’ve had a year to really reflect on the things that really matter… the things that are completely relevant and important to me,” Limbaugh said. “And all of you are in that large conglomeration of things that are very important to me.”
Limbaugh said he “wasn’t expected to be alive today.”
“I wasn’t expected to make it to October, and then to November, and then to December,” he said. “And yet, here I am and today, got some problems, but I’m feeling pretty good today… God knows how important this program is for me today.”
In late January, multiple doctors confirmed his “terminal diagnosis,” In February, Limbaugh revealed that he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. The radio host said he was “shocked” by his “dire” illness, adding, “I’m Rush Limbaugh. I’m Mr. Big… I’m indestructible. It can’t be right, but it was.”
Emotionally he said, “I can’t be self-absorbed about it when that is the tendency when you are told that you’ve got a due date.” He said, “You have an expiration date. A lot of people never get told that, so they don’t face life this way.”
In February, Donald Trump awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address.
“So many people have put me first in all of this,” Limbaugh said. “I feel extremely fortunate and lucky. And because I’ve been able to outlive the diagnosis, I’ve been able to receive and hear and process some of the most wonderful, nice things about me that I might not have ever heard if I had not gotten sick.”
With tears coming down his face, Limbaugh said he has “learned what love really is through this.”
He said, “My point in all of this today is gratitude.” He added, “My point in all of this is to say thanks and tell everybody involved how much I love you from the bottom of a sizable and growing and still-beating heart.”
“It has helped me to see so much so clearly about the goodness in people and their decency,” he said. “And it’s confirmed so much about my instinctive beliefs about people.”
Limbaugh has been the leading conservative radio host and a star of the airwaves for more than three decades. According to Talkers, he has over 15.5 million listeners who tune in weekly as of December 2019.
