Jeopardy!'s Alex Trebek Reveals He Has Beaten the One-Year Survival Rate for Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer — Watch

Ryan Schwartz
·3 min read

Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek has good news to share regarding his health: He has defied the odds and survived one full year with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

“The one-year survival rate for Stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients is 18 percent,” he says in the above video, which was first shared on Wednesday. “I’m very happy to report that I have just reached that marker.

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“Now, I’d be lying if I said the journey had been an easy one,” he continues. “There were some good days, but a lot of not-so-good days. I joked with friends that the cancer won’t kill me; the chemo treatments will. There were moments of great pain, days where certain bodily functions no longer functioned, and sudden, massive attacks of great depression that made me wonder if it really was worth fighting on. But I brushed that aside quickly, because that would have been a massive betrayal — a betrayal of my wife and soulmate, Jean, who has given her all to help me survive. It would have been a betrayal of other cancer patients who have looked to me as an inspiration and a cheerleader of sorts, of the value of living and hope. And it would certainly have been a betrayal of my faith in God and the millions of prayers that have been said on my behalf.”

Trebek goes on to share a reassuring anecdote from a recent doctor’s visit. “You know, my oncologist tried to cheer me up the other day. He said, ‘Alex, even though the two-year survival rate is only seven percent,’ he was certain that one year from now, the two of us would be sitting in his office celebrating my second anniversary of survival. And you know something? If I, no, if we — because so many of us are involved in this same situation — if we take it just one day at a time, with a positive attitude, anything is possible,” Trebek declares. “I’ll keep you posted.”

Trebek, who has hosted Jeopardy! since 1984, announced last March that he’d been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He returned to work in August after a successful round of chemotherapy, but suffered a setback in September and restarted chemotherapy. In January, he told reporters at the Television Critics Association winter press tour that he has no plans to sign off of the long-running quiz show “in the near future.”

Watch Trebek’s one-year update above.

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