Tom Brokaw Shares 'Bad Experience' With Rare Blood Cancer
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Tom Brokaw is giving insight into his longtime battle with an incurable blood cancer.
The famed newsman—who helmed Today, NBC Nightly News, and Meet the Press at different points during his impressive 55-year career—sat down with CBS Sunday Morning's Jane Pauley for a new interview. And during the one-on-one chat, Brokaw, 83, opened up about his ongoing health struggles with multiple myeloma, which he was diagnosed with in 2013.
"I've had a bad experience," he said, also noting that his doctors didn't think he'd live this long. "I kept thinking bad things wouldn't happen to me. But as I grew older, I began to develop this condition. And what you try to do is control it as much as you can."
For those unfamiliar with multiple myeloma, the Cleveland Clinic describes the disease as "when healthy plasma cells become abnormal cells that multiply and produce abnormal antibodies."
The description continued, "This change starts a cascade of medical issues and conditions that can affect your bones, your kidneys and your body’s ability to make healthy red and white blood cells and platelets. While healthcare providers can’t cure multiple myeloma, they can treat related conditions and symptoms and slow its progress."
Brokaw continued working for many years after his diagnosis, ultimately retiring in 2021. On walking away from a profession he was so dedicated to, he shared, "I really had to give up my daily activity with NBC. You know, I had to walk away from them, as they were walking away from me. I just wasn’t the same person."
Courtesy of CBS
He added, "And so for the first time in my life, I was kind of out there, you know, in a place I had never been in my life.”
While he stepped away from the anchor's desk, Brokaw is still hard at work, penning a new book, Never Give Up: A Prairie Family’s Story, which hit shelves this June.
Catch Brokaw's full interview Sunday, June 25 at 9 a.m. ET on CBS.
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