The Tragedy Of Fox News Host Neil Cavuto Is So Sad

Neil Cavuto, a news personality who left Fox News in December 2024, has always been hard to put into a category. As host of multiple shows within the Fox Network, Cavuto’s take on the business world was often more nuanced than fellow Fox spitfires like Tucker Carlson. Originally hired to the network by disgraced television executive Roger Ailes, Cavuto was passionate during his time there hosting shows like “Cavuto Coast to Coast” and “Your World With Cavuto.” When he announced he was leaving Fox on the latter show, he stressed that he wasn’t leaving the news business entirely. “[I’m] not leaving journalism. I’m just leaving here,” he said. “I got to do what I love to do, report the news.”

However, his passion for journalism might have exacerbated some ongoing health crises with which Cavuto was struggling. There are many tragic details that Cavuto has had to overcome to get to where he is today. Most of them revolve around ongoing health issues. Cavuto himself will often joke about his bad luck in regards to everything he’s gone through — all while he refuses to let any setbacks stop him.

From cancer to an autoimmune disorder to surprise heart surgery, Cavuto has proven time and time again that he can make it through whatever is thrown his way. But there’s even more. Here’s a peek at just some of the tragedy Cavuto has gone through.

When he was just 29, Neil Cavuto was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When the cancer was found, it was already at Stage 4 — the most advanced stage possible. In an interview with NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Cavuto opened up about how he was able to beat such an aggressive illness. “They radiated my lung — that area around my lung. And so half my lung is out.”

However, once he beat cancer, the battle was not over. Cancer recovery can be a years-long experience that comes with its own complications. For Cavuto, this included something that could have jeopardized his future career. “I get pneumonia quite easily, or my — bronchitis will happen. My voice will get really compromised,” he continued. Refusing to let any of this hold him back, at the height of his career, Cavuto was hosting 17 hours of live television per week and even had the energy to lose his cool once or twice. However, cancer wasn’t the only health crisis coming for Cavuto.

In 1997, Neil Cavuto discovered he had multiple sclerosis. According to Brain and Life, when Cavuto first experienced symptoms of MS — tingling, disorientation, headaches — he thought it was something else entirely. “I thought my cancer had returned … It was hard for me to accept that I had MS 10 years after beating cancer. The odds are approximately 2 million to 1 of developing both.” Cavuto admits to struggling with the diagnosis at first, but ultimately used it to reframe his perspective on life, saying “I don’t take my success for granted, and I value the time I spend with my wife and children.”

While there currently is no cure for MS, it is one of the few autoimmune diseases that are highly treatable, with more options opening up as science advances. For his part, Cavuto is thankful that he was diagnosed at the time he was. “If I had been diagnosed 10 years earlier, I think my story would be drastically different,” Cavuto said. Once he opened up about having MS, many fans returned the favor and began sharing stories and support, with many of these anecdotes making it into Cavuto’s book: “More Than Money: True Stories of People Who Learned Life’s Ultimate Lesson.”

One would think that surviving cancer and dealing with an ongoing illness would be enough for one person, but Neil Cavuto had yet another health tragedy come his way in 2016. According to The Hill, when Cavuto went in for a routine checkup, he came out needing triple bypass surgery. A few weeks later, Cavuto became one of many celebs who have kept quiet about undergoing surgery, although his absence from the small screen was notable.

Gearing up for the 2016 election season, Cavuto struggled to recover on the sidelines while unprecedented news was being presented without him. “My wife was commenting on why I was throwing things at the TV set. That was her first clue that I was getting better,” he told The Hill. “It drove me nuts to be missing it and not part of the action.” 

When Cavuto was set to get back behind the desk for his three programs across two Fox networks, he came back at a tragic time. In one of the biggest Fox News scandals, sexual harassment claims had been filed against executive Roger Ailes, causing chaos behind the scenes as Cavuto was set to return to work. However, Cavuto paced himself, knowing Fox could use his help, and his wife could use a break. In a response as to why he returned to work before doctors wanted him to, Cavuto said, “I kept saying, ‘I don’t know what more I can do, sitting at home annoying my wife.'”

With all his health ailments, Neil Cavuto became a rare voice of reason on Fox News during the frenzy around the COVID-19 pandemic. When Cavuto urged viewers to get vaccinated it set off a flurry of fury in Cavuto’s direction. After appearing on “MediaBuzz” and admitting he had caught COVID-19 even after getting vaccinated against it, Cavuto pleaded for others to still get inoculated against the virus. He told viewers that had he not been vaccinated, he could have succumbed to the illness. “Life is way too short to be ignorant of the promise of something that is helping people worldwide,” he said. “Stop the deaths. Stop the suffering. Please get vaccinated. Please.” The plea did not go over well.

In a follow-up segment on “Your World With Neil Cavuto,” Cavuto and Dion Baia read aloud some of the hateful messages he had received after making his impassioned call to action. (via New York Daily News) However, not all the mail was incensed; there were a few people who supported what the anchor had to say. One commenter even pointed to how Cavuto has long felt this way about vaccines, writing, “Neil Cavuto has been fully vaccinated for months and has been a vocal advocate about the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines publicly and repeatedly on air. This is not a new position for him.” However, Cavuto’s second dance with COVID was much more difficult.

In 2022, Neil Cavuto opened up about his scary experience with COVID-19 when he caught the bug a second time around. The first case of the coronavirus Cavuto caught was much milder; however, for his second bout, Cavuto told CNN he had a “far, far more serious strand.” As mentioned earlier, due to radiation treatment for cancer in his younger years, Cavuto is now prone to lung infections such as pneumonia. This is exactly what happened in 2022 when his COVID case included pneumonia that was so bad it put him “in intensive care for quite a while.”

“It was really touch and go,” Cavuto said when he returned to “Cavuto Coast to Coast.” However, he kept it classy with his usual charming sass by following that up with, “Some of you who’ve wanted to put me out of my misery darn near got what you wished for! So sorry to disappoint you!” This once again led Cavuto to push a pro-vaccine message on his show, reminding viewers that “had I not been vaccinated at all, I wouldn’t be here.”