Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is deadly; doctors agree more may be at work than chemo. Only three months after Alex Trebek announced he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, the beloved host of Jeopardy! has been told by doctors that he is “near remission.”
The game-show host opened up about his ordeal to People magazine in an interview, where he described the his turn of fortune as “mind-boggling”:
“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.”
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most alarming diagnoses a patient can get. The 5-year survival rate of those diagnosed with most advanced stage is cited by Medical News Today as between 1% and 3%. In 2009, actor Patrick Swayze succumbed to the illness after two years of battling.
Trebek is not free and clear of the illness yet. He told People that he still had several rounds of chemotherapy left, but he and his doctors are hopeful that he will reach full remission.
Alex has been very forthright with his fans about his illness. In March, he took a moment during a Jeopardy! broadcast to explain his situation to the audience and ask them for their prayers and support. Now, Trebek is crediting those prayers for his good fortune:
“I’ve got a couple million people out there who have expressed their good thoughts, their positive energy directed towards me and their prayers,” he says. “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.”
Trebek tends to keep his faith to himself, but he has spoken of his Catholic upbringing, as well as his time at Catholic boarding school. While announcing the recent good news, he spoke of prayer with the utmost respect:
“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.”
