WISN’s Belling says he’s recovering from stroke
Conservative host says it came during Feb. 11 show
Longtime conservative radio talker Mark Belling told his listeners on WISNAM (1130) Monday afternoon that he had a stroke while at the station during his show Feb. 11.
In a broadcast posted online Monday night, Belling said he was doing his program when, during an extended commercial break, “I had this weird sensation going on.
“It just all of a sudden came on, there was no warning. … It was not excruciating, it was not debilitating. Your head’s crumbling inside.”
After about a half-hour, Belling told listeners, he called his doctor’s office and was urged to get himself to the nearest hospital.
“What was happening was I was having a stroke. Which makes what I did next all the more idiotic — I drove over there,” he said.
Belling spent a couple of days in the hospital before being released Feb. 13.
Apart from telling WISN program director Jerry Bott and another member of the station, Belling said he was breaking the news on his health on his show.
“The reason I didn’t want anyone else to know … now that we have more access to information than ever, we have more access to than ever,” Belling said.
As he showed on his abbreviated stint on his show Monday afternoon, Belling’s speech isn’t any aftereffects from the showing stroke.
“As far as I can tell, I’m not slurring anything,” he said.
The only effects of the stroke, he said, have been loss of peripheral vision on his right side — no driving — and trouble “resolving the two eyes for my vision — makes it hard for me to read.”
The latter is, for now, the biggest impact on Belling being able to do his show, since reading things aloud is a big part of his program.
So, he said, “I’m going to be off the air for a few days.”
“I’ve got to do this right or I’m not going to be able to come back and be any good at this thing — at all,” he added.
Belling pointed out that he was supposed to be off the air anyway — not in rehab, but on the 2019 edition of his annual cruise, which runs Feb. 15-March 2 in Australia and New Zealand.
Belling noted that, if the stroke had happened en route to the cruise, “I’d be dead.”
Belling joined WISN as the news-talk station’s drive-time host in March 1989, and has been a fixture in local talk radio ever since.