Jeopardy Host Alex Trebek In Near Remission From Cancer

Jeopardy host Alex Trebek revealed three months ago that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, but thankfully the longtime host is making significant progress in his treatment. Trebeck spoke to People about his progress and shared that he is in “near remission”, and that’s no small feat. Pancreatic cancer has a 9% survival rate, but Trebek has been responding positively to the chemotherapy.

“It’s kind of mind-boggling,” Trebek said. “The doctors said they hadn’t seen this kind of positive result in their memory…some of the tumors have already shrunk by more than 50 percent.”

Trebek explained that while he has several more rounds of chemotherapy to undergo, he is hopeful for complete remission, and couldn’t be more thankful and thrilled at how far he’s come already. He got emotional when he heard the good news from doctors, “but they were tears of joy, not tears of depression,” Trebek said.

“I’ve got a couple million people out there who have expressed their good thoughts, their positive energy directed towards me and their prayers,” Trebek said. “I told the doctors, this has to be more than just the chemo, and they agreed it could very well be an important part of this. I’ve got a lot of love out there headed in my direction and a lot of prayer, and I will never ever minimize the value of that.”

Trebek has been adamant about fighting this ever since he announced the diagnosis. “Now normally, the prognosis for this is not very encouraging, but I’m going to fight this, and I’m going to keep working,” Trebek said in the video. “With the love and support of my family and friends and with the help of your prayers also, I plan to beat the low survival rate statistics for this disease. So help me. Keep the faith and we’ll win. We’ll get it done. Thank you.”

It was recently revealed that Trebek would be returning for Jeopardy’s 36th season as host, and we hope the next update from Trebek is about him entering full remission.