Two years ago, Howard Stern sent SiriusXM's 36 million subscribers into a frenzy after he canceled his show and took a day off but, what he did not tell them was that he had a massive cancer scare and had to go for surgery.
Instead, when the "shock jock" was back on air he said he had been battling with flu.
"I missed a day of work and all of a sudden it’s bigger news than James Comey," he said at the time, adding that he felt so guilty for doing so because of the sensation it caused, Page Six noted.
Stern now has revealed the real reason why he took time off work that day and it was far more serious than the flu.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the veteran jock explained that he had been going back and forth between doctors who were monitoring his low white blood count when they discovered a growth on his kidney that was 90% likely to be cancerous. He had to go for surgery and the idea left him scared for his life.
"And now all I'm thinking is, 'I'm going to die,' " he said of the moment he was wheeled into theater. The growth turned out to be a harmless cyst but the cancer scare forced Stern to take a cold, hard look at his life. He said he regretted how he acted as a father to his three daughters and how he treated their mother, his first wife.
"I didn’t know what was up and what was down, and there was no room for anybody else on the planet," he said. Since then Stern has worked through a lot of personal issues and part of that process involved writing a new book, "Howard Stern Comes Again," due out May 14.
"I'm at a place now where I am trying to figure out how to spend the rest of my life, however long that might be," he said.
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