Travel Host Rick Steves Gives Update on Prostate Cancer Battle

TV travel host Rick Steves is giving a positive update about his “latest adventure” with cancer. A little more than a month after he announced his prostate cancer diagnosis, Steves, 69, revealed in a Tuesday, Oct. 8 update on X that he is back home after undergoing a “successful surgery” that showed “no sign of any spread.”

“Thanks for all the support since I first told you about my prostate cancer diagnosis,” Steves wrote. “I promised you an update when I shared this news back in August — and I’m happy to say that I’m home now after successful surgery and a night in the hospital. (Packing light for my homecoming, I left my prostate there.)”

Steves went on to call his cancer battle “the “latest adventure in a lifetime of travels,” the Rick Steves’ Europe host adding that “like always, I’m excited to share a trip report with you.” According to Steves, his journey “began with a blood draw to screen for prostate cancer,” which revealed that he had a PSA score of 55, which is higher than the normal score of below 4 for someone his age.

“It was like I’d been thrown into a new land fraught with mystery and uncertainty,” Steves recalled. “Suddenly swept away from my general practitioner and into the world of oncology, I needed to make important decisions about things I knew nothing of, and I barely spoke the language.”

The bestselling author, who spends a third of every year in Europe, “had options (basically non-surgical treatments or just cut it out).” After “talking with my doctor and carefully considering each treatment strategy,” Steves said he “chose to undergo a robotic radical prostatectomy,” describing surgery day as “a high point on this journey’s itinerary.”

“I wake up feeling great, chatty, and making jokes I think are clever… clearly on some serious medicine,” he continued. “Thankfully, my doctor has a good report: Surgery went well, there was no sign of any spread, and the cancer seems to have been embedded deep in my prostate, which is now at the lab.”

The TV travel guide said he “won’t really know how ‘it went’ until the lab reports are in. And that’s when I hope to hear the words ‘cancer-free.’” He added that he is still “still in the next stage of this trip: ‘the road to recovery.’”

Steves, who said he is thankful “to “live in a corner of the world where hospitals aren’t being bombed or flooded,” said the next step in his recovery “is to get my catheter taken out — after which I’ll be steep on the incontinence learning curve. Then, I’ll get the lab reports. (I’ll be sure to keep you posted.)” In the meantime, he said he is “making a point to celebrate the vibrancy that fills my world… to give thanks for everything that works well in my body… and to meditate on how communities, technologies, and livable environments that we enjoy are not accidental — they happen when good people care and do good things… I’m looking forward to many more years of happy travels — and, of course, I’ll be sure to bring you along!”