‘Jeopardy’ Host Alex Trebek Gives New Cancer Battle Update

Earlier this year, Alex Trebek updated Jeopardy! fans on his health status in his first live interview since his stage four pancreatic cancer diagnosis and shared his appreciation for support he’s received from fans.

“My oncologist tells me I’m doing well, even though I don’t always feel it,” Trebek told Robin Roberts, who survived breast cancer, on Good Morning America on Wednesday.

The 78-year-old admitted that his chemotherapy gives him “surges of deep, deep sadness.”

“I’ve had kidney stones, I’ve had ruptured discs, so I’m used to dealing with pain. But what I”m not used to dealing with is the surges that come on suddenly of deep, deep sadness, and it brings tears to my eyes,” he said.

“I’ve discovered in this whole episode, ladies and gentlemen, that I’m a bit of a wuss. But I’m fighting through it. My platelets, my blood counts are steady, my weight is steady… the cancer indicators are coming down. So I’ve got another chemo next week and then we’ll do a review to find out where things stand.”

“Chemo affects people in different ways. People have to understand that,” Trebek said. “There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘Hey I’m really depressed today and I have no idea why. Why am I crying today?’”

He added that “the chemo takes it out of you, and I feel so weak all the time, and that’s not a good place to be.”

He stressed the importance of a positive attitude throughout his treatment plan, even while he’s in receiving chemotherapy treatments. “I just take it as it coms. It’s no big deal. I go in and I sit down, I joke with the nurses and I’m there for an hour and a half while they inject all this stuff into me,” he said. “And then I go home and I have a good day and then the next day for no good reason that I can fathom, it turns south on me.”

“But that’s OK,” he continued. “You have to deal with it. What am I gonna do? It is something I am afflicted with. We are dealing with it chemically and spiritually, and those are positives. And hopefully everything is going to turn out well and I’ll be back on the air with original programming come this September.”

“I’ve had so many contacts from people who have survived cancer. I am now a 30-day survivor,” he said. “I’m going to catch up to those other people.”

“People all over America have been sharing their good thoughts, their advice, their prayers,” he continued. “And I feel it’s been making a difference in my well being.”

Trebek even spoke about Jeopardy!‘s current dominator, James Holzhauer, who has won 18 games in a row and well over a million dollars.

“It’s exciting, it’s fun, I watch it every night like most of America,” Trebek said. “He has forced me to change a view that I’ve held for many years, and that is that the Ken Jennings record would never be broken. But I look at James and I say, ‘Oh my gosh, look at what he’s doing.’”

He continued, “Winning a lot of money on Jeopardy! is not that difficult. If you hit the Daily Doubles and you’re good, you’re responding to those clues by yourself. But winning 74 games in a row, that’s the tough part,” he said, alluding to the record set by Jennings. “And that’s what America should be concentrating on right now.”

He continued to praise Holzhauer, a professional sports gambler from Las Vegas, saying that he has “no weaknesses.”

“When you look at his perforce, he has no weaknesses! He’s only missed one Final Jeopardy, I believe he’s missed four Daily Doubles, he’s all in so often. He knows how to play the game, as Ken did. He has a strategy, he’s a gambler, he knows when to go all in and when to lay back a little bit.”

Holzhauer will try to tie Julia Collins for her title of second-most games won on Jeopardy with 19 games on Wednesday night. Check your local listings to see when and where Jeopardy! airs.