Chicago Anchor Battling Leukemia
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WBBM Anchor Brad Edwards has a rare form of leukemia.
He has been battling it for a while and many of his co-workers didn’t even know he was sick. “I don’t want it to be a pity party, he said.
But now he’s ready to share his story.
The Chicago Tribune writes that the CBS O&O Anchor says, “I feel like a part of my job is transparency. Here’s what I got, and everybody’s got something, you know? And we’re all struggling. Some more than others. We’re all struggling in this pandemic,” Edwards said.
He says that in 2017, he experienced constant exhaustion and physical pain that made him think he was dying, “and if I wasn’t dying, I didn’t want to live like how I was living.” Edwards — who loves to golf, grill and watch his older brother, Matt Edwards, officiate NFL games — was diagnosed with large granular lymphocyte (LGL) leukemia.
It is a chronic disease, and those who have it may also have rheumatoid arthritis and anemia. Edwards said he doesn’t suffer from those conditions, but he does have an unusually low number of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell the body uses to fight off bacterial infections. Edwards said he gets his blood drawn every eight to 12 weeks, follows a healthy eating plan, exercises regularly and adheres to a medication regimen.
“There’s a lot of relatively good news for this rare leukemia. First thing, patients live quite a long time. Some patients don’t need treatment. If treatment is needed, treatment usually works,” said Dr. Thomas P. Loughran Jr., the University of Virginia Cancer Center director who discovered LGL leukemia and met with Edwards. “About 80 to 90% of patients will need treatment because their blood counts will progressively get lower over time. The bad news is that right now there is no cure for this illness.”
Edwards said he is glad to be on the “right road” with this disease. He describes himself as a “pretty insecure guy in a pretty insecure job” and talks candidly about taking anti-anxiety medication for many years. He said the last round of layoffs at CBS “hurts terribly.”
His goal is to continue to do accountability journalism and keep his colleagues — and himself — employed.
“When I got this promotion, I changed nothing about my life. I have no expectation that this is a forever thing, but I do know the great part about it is, it’s come with a drastic change of how we’re reporting. We are data-driven, we’re source-driven, we’re (Freedom of Information Act)-driven, and it’s exactly what I believe in,” Edwards said.
“I think the microphone is an extremely powerful apparatus, and we need to use it to give voice to the voiceless, change laws, change policies, and we’re doing that. So that was a huge thing for me in also taking the job, because I realize you can’t just put a new guy into the chair and be like, Oh, everything’s different now. Well, no, it’s not. It’s just a new guy in the chair.”
FTVLive wishes Brad nothing but the best and it is good to see a guy with this kind of perspective.
Our business could use more of that.
