PBB PHOTO | Shelter Island Town Supervisor Jim Dougherty at a recent Town Board meeting.

Supervisor Jim Dougherty announced Tuesday he had learned that he probably has non-Hodgins lymphoma and that he’d spent 12 hours at Eastern Long Island Hospital on Monday undergoing his first chemotherapy treatment.

He said the treatments were expected to go on for “a couple of months.”

The diagnosis came after he had taken routine tests at Lenox Hill Hospital ahead of a scheduled hernia operation, he explained during the Town Board work session Tuesday.  He was told to get a sigmoidoscopy because of something “suspicious,” he said.

“We make plans,” he said, “and God is in the bushes laughing.”

The disease is a cancer of the lymph nodes. The supervisor said tests of six of his lymph nodes showed no evidence of cancer but his doctor remained concerned.

“Anyway, I’m going to lose my hair at some point and I thought you’d like to know,” he said after noting that the utterly bald actor Yul Brynner had been voted “the sexiest man alive.”

Supervisor Dougherty gave the news as a “personal matter” during the “Around the Table” portion of the work session when each Town Board member offers updates on issues and topics in which they are involved.