“Access Hollywood” anchor Billy Bush has come down with mono—but he’s not planning to take any time off to deal with the illness.
Mr. Bush revealed his medical condition Tuesday night via a message on the Twitter microblogging service.
“Health has been off the last 2 wks. Tests are back. I have mono,” Mr. Bush wrote. “My 10yr old had it, now me. Don’t share drinks.. Shuda known better I guess.”
In an interview with TVWeek shortly after his post, Mr. Bush said he was actually relieved by the diagnosis.
“I’d been in something of a health scare,” he said, noting recent medical tests had shown his liver enzymes at up to eight times their normal levels. Mono is rare in adults over 30, Mr. Bush said, so doctors didn’t immediately suspect the condition when Mr. Bush began suffering various physical ailments.
Mr. Bush did take much of last week off, but he was back on camera Sunday hosting NBC’s coverage of the Miss USA pageant. “My mom called me after and said I looked really sick,” he said.
Nonetheless, Mr. Bush doesn’t think he’ll need to miss many tapings of “Access,” particularly since the May ratings sweeps begins this week.
“Rob (Silverstein, executive producer of ‘Access’) sent an email to the staff today about sweeps starting, and telling us, ‘The words “not available” do not apply’,” Mr. Bush said. “Rob knows I’m an animal. I’m gonna go in.”
So why reveal his medical condition on Twitter? Mr. Bush said he had been serving up tweets for days about his various ailments.
“People had been asking me how I was, so why not put a bow on it,” by letting his followers know what was going on, Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush— or @billybush to the Twitterati—has been active on the service for several months now. His often frank tweets have stirred up buzz before, including just this week when he took E! News anchor Guiliana Rancic to task for Twitter comments she made about Ms. California’s anti-gay marriage stance.
Ms. Rancic, saying she should probably be objective, nonetheless slammed Ms. California for her statements. Mr. Bush then replied with comments suggesting Ms. Rancic wasn’t a journalist.
Mr. Bush later used Twitter to apologize for his Tweets, and he now says he should have edited himself.
“We’re all trying to figure it out,” Mr. Bush said of Twitter. “But I’m fascinated by it. I love the exchange of ideas.”