Howard Stern Was Afraid of Losing His Hair During Cancer Scare: ‘Imagine My Face With a Bald Head’

There were plenty of worries that crossed Howard Stern‘s mind when he faced a cancer scare back in 2017, and one of them was losing his hair due to chemo.

“I might have been at Sloan Kettering hooked up to a slow drip of chemo and deprived of my Samson-like mane,” the 65-year-old writes in his new book, Howard Stern Comes Again. “Certainly, I know that losing my hair wouldn’t be the worst of chemo, but just imagine my face with a bald head.”

The shock jock kept his cancer scare a secret for quite some time, only revealing the news recently. It all kicked off on the morning of May 10, 2017, as the radio personality took a day off from his very popular show, The Stern Show. While rumors swirled around as to why the hardworking Private Parts author didn’t show up to work, he simply chalked it all up to having the flu. But there was something more serious going on — he was at the hospital getting surgery.

Howard revealed the doctors discovered a growth on his kidney that had a 90 percent chance of being cancerous. “And now all I’m thinking is, ‘I’m going to die,’” he recalled in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “And I’m scared s–tless.” Thankfully, the growth turned out to be a benign cyst, but the close call made him reevaluate his past behavior.

“I was so completely f–ked up back then,” he told the outlet. “I didn’t know what was up and what was down, and there was no room for anybody else on the planet.” Today, his outlook has changed. “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.

Luckily for Howard, he is doesn’t have to worry about cancer, and can move forward and focus on his family life — he has been married to Beth Stern since 2008. He also shares three daughters — Emily, 37, Deborah, 32, and Ashley, 32 — with his ex Alison Berns (the pair were married from 1978 to 2001).