In a revealing post on LinkedIn, Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto writes about his life before and after being diagnosed with MS, which he says has forced him to become more humble while still working in a cut-throat business. “It humbled me and I could have used some humbling.”
Cavuto writes that he would “step on people on the ladder and happily do it. If you fell from the ladder when I stepped on your hand, so be it.” But his diagnosis, which followed quickly after treatment for cancer, changed everything. “Before I had cancer, more to the point before I had MS, I was an asshole. I was so self-absorbed in my career…I think the one thing an illness teaches you is to be less of a jerk and to think of people. It’s not always about you. The irony is in all of this, I did very well despite not being a jerk about it, not being mean to people or stepping on people.”
Cavuto, who has spoken extensively and worked to raise awareness of MS, says he has been forced by the disease to change the way he does his job:
Mid-shows, I’ve been blinded, literally, as my vision has all but blacked out. Adjusting to that alone took years. I’m now at the point I no longer use a TelePrompTer at all, not because I’m smooth, but because I have no choice. I’ve taken to memorizing scripts and bullet points, even guests’ points of views and myriad of segment facts, so I’m ready for anything, any time. These weren’t choices I wanted to make; these were choices I “had” to make. It’s all about compensating — and recovering. I’ve gotten pretty good at this, or at least faster reacting to this — adjusting for muscles that might suddenly fail me or a brain that might short-circuit on me. It’s always the same drill — work with what works in my body, and don’t panic over what’s not.”