Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek and his wife Jean Trebek detailed the host’s continued struggle against stage 4 pancreatic cancer in a recent interview.
“It’s when I see him in pain, and I can’t help him,” Jean Trebek said was the most difficult part about her husband’s fight against cancer in an interview with ABC, which will air on Thursday.
“I don’t mind getting choked up,” Alex Trebek said about the moment a contestant on the show wrote the message, “We love you, Alex,” as his answer during the final rounds of an episode last month. “My oncologist told me one of the symptoms, if you will, of pancreatic cancer is that you get these moments of depression, sadness.”
Alex Trebek gets choked up during Final Jeopardy when a contestant sends him a sweet message. pic.twitter.com/maKW8Bsm0C
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 12, 2019
Alex Trebek first announced back in March that he had been diagnosed with cancer. In August, he finished chemotherapy and returned to work on the show. The game show host said he plans on continuing to work for Jeopardy! as long as his abilities “do not diminish.”
“I have learned something in the past year and it’s this: We don’t know when we’re going to die,” he told ABC. “Because of the cancer diagnosis, it’s no longer an open-ended life, it’s a closed-ended life because of the terrible … survival rates of pancreatic cancer. Because of that, and something else that is operating here, people all over America and abroad have decided they want to let me know now, while I’m alive, about the impact that I’ve been having on their existence.”
Alex Trebek said that while his cancer is in “near remission,” he will have to do another round of treatment.
“We may try a new protocol … a different chemo or something in the trial stage that is not chemotherapy,” he said. “I don’t mind experimenting. I’ve got nothing to lose, so let’s go for it.”
