Inside Neil Cavuto’s health struggles as Fox host, 63, has battled through MS, cancer, open heart surgery and Covid
FOX News host Neil Cavuto is a well-loved star on the network but many fans may be unaware of the severe health struggles he’s battled with over the decades.
Cavuto, 63, has not only beaten cancer but works with a multiple sclerosis diagnosis and had open-heart surgery five years ago.
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Neil Cavuto during ‘Cavuto’ on Fox Business Network in 2011Credit: Getty
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Neil Cavuto attends a book signing for his new book Your Money or Your Life in 2005Credit: Getty
Late last year, the TV star also contracted Covid but was fully vaccinated and only suffered minor symptoms as a result.
Through the decades of his broadcast career, Cavuto has jumped from one major health crisis to the other but has continued on air, even when treatment once left him reportedly throwing up on a sidewalk.
Cavuto’s first battle was with the blood cancer Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which he was diagnosed with in the 1980s.
He told SurvivorNet that when he first fell sick, he believed get had a cold, before he was admitted to the hospital for treatment for viral meningitis.
Once hospitalized, doctors reportedly found a huge tumor in his chest and a biopsy revealed it was advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Over the next eight months, he underwent intensive chemotherapy and then three months of radiation.
Yet despite the intensity of the treatment, Cavuto – then a correspondent for PBS’ Nightly Business Report – continued to work through nausea, hair loss, weight gain due to steroids, and mood swings.
He wrote in his 2004 book More than Money: True Stories of People Who Learned Life’s Ultimate Lesson about a moment when he fell ill while finishing up a report outside the New York Stock Exchange.
He was that he was suddenly hit by nausea and threw up, just missing some passersby as the camera operator looked on.
“Ashamed, I found the energy to pray that no one would report my actions back to the Nightly Business Report offices,” Cavuto wrote.
He has also said that it changed his perspective of his work when he got the diagnosis.
“I was not the greatest person,” Cavuto said.
“When I first got the cancer diagnosis, I don’t think I was an evil person, but I was so career-centric.”
He said that since then he is “more focused on just trying to be a good human being rather than just a good journalist.”
MS DIAGNOSIS
The beloved personality beat cancer but more was still to come.
A decade later in 1997, he was diagnosed with MS after experiencing headaches, back pain, tripping or stumbling, and periods of blurred vision.
Cavuto says he has learned to live with the brain and spinal cord disease but had to make small changes to his life to make things work.
For example, as MS gave him more trouble reading a teleprompter, he learned to depend more on note carded or color-coding notes.
More health issues struck the anchor in 2016 when he underwent open-heart surgery after tests revealed a closed artery.
Yet he was soon back on the air with a heavy broadcast schedule.
In fact, when Cavuto contract Coid last year, he only took a week off before he began broadcasting again from his home.
“While I’m somewhat stunned by this news, doctors tell me I’m lucky as well,” Cavuto said in a statement released by Fox News at the time.
“Had I not been vaccinated, and with all my medical issues, this would be a far more dire situation.”
BACK TO WORK
“Let’s be honest here. I mean this is not me carrying steel beams at a construction site,” he joked when asked about the hectic work schedule while ill to SurvivorNet.
He has also said that despite years with MS, it’s cancer that stands out to him among his health battles.
“There were some good drugs out there and it can alleviate the progression somewhat, but it’s still progressive,” Cavuto said of MS.
“With cancer, you never know,” he added.
“It can return. I’ve seen that or it can pop up somewhere else in the body and it is one of the big, scary mysteries of illnesses.”
“Find a way to get through it” Cavuto believes is the best attitude to have when life throws a health problem in your path.
“The message I try to get out there is we can’t change the stuff that life throws at us, but we can control how we react to the stuff that life throws at us.
“I am always impressed by those who just have a good attitude.”
Cavuto continues to present Your World with Neil Cavuto and Cavuto Live on Fox News and Cavuto: Coast to Coast on the Fox Business Network.
