Alex Trebek announces that he’s back in chemo treatment in latest cancer update
Aux Features Alex Trebek
Jeopardy host Alex Trebek announced via the show’s YouTube channel that he will resume chemotherapy for his cancer treatment. The famous host revealed that he had stage 4 of pancreatic cancer in March 2019. He has been candid with fans since then, giving updates on his condition over the last few months.
In this most recent update, the host states, “This past summer, because I was making such good progress, we thought I was finished with chemo. That was a bit premature and certainly over-optimistic,” after his numbers went south after immunotherapy. Trebek was his jovial self as he broke the news about his doctor’s recommendation to restart chemo saying, “Hey, it worked well the first time, so we are expecting good results again.”
The 79-year-old host, who has been with Jeopardy since its 1984 revival, renewed his contract in 2018, which would make him host until 2022. After Trebek announced his diagnosis six months ago, THR reported that he returned to film new episodes in August after his first round of chemotherapy. The 36th season of Jeopardy began on September 9 with Trebek back in action, saying, “I’m happy to report, I’m still here.”
25 Comments
Cancer or not, I wish I look that good at 79 years young.
Oh fuck. Trying to be optimistic about this but I just had a family friend die from pancreatic cancer last week. It’s a pretty tricky cancer.
So sorry. As I just posted above, it got my mother six months ago. Even the most optimistic oncologist knows there’s not much to be done once diagnosed.
Given what I know about how hard it is to cure pancreatic cancer (as in it’s not, right?) I didn’t believe Trebek’s first report that he was out of the woods, even if he was naturally optimistic, as he should have been. As tragic it is (and I’ve watched him host the show all of my life), it’s not unlikely that he will pass away in a few years. But you lived a heck of a life, Alex, and brought happiness to millions of people. Then again, spoilers for The Farewell, which you should see, Lulu Wang’s grandmother is still alive six years after being diagnosed with her type of cancer, so what do I know? I really hope I’m wrong.
Fun fact: Several years ago I visited the Hearst estate at San Simeon, and to my surprise / delight, the audio tour that plays on the bus ride to the estate is narrated by Alex Trebek. He sounds just as pleasantly condescending as can be. Hopefully they never change that, and years after his death people will sit on that bus thinking, “Who is this man, and why can’t I shake the sense that he’s talking down to me?”To be clear, the man is a treasure. But a big part of that is the cool, collected way that he puts people in their place.
Yeah, I can’t recall any other pop culture figure being able to get away with that tone as much as he can.
I had the same thing happen to me. I kinda wished he had overprounounced some French words to us as we made our way up the hill.
You probably are not. The relatively short progression free time isn’t such a great sign either, although it appears he is being treated based on a rise in CA 19-9 since every report talks about “the numbers.” I never really liked that approach and preferred to wait until there were more reliable things to follow, like a mass on CT scan. There isn’t any evidence that treating him now is better than waiting for something measurable. Tumor markers like CA 19-9 can be very volatile and are easy to get, but not all that reliable.
They aren’t reliable in themselves, but depending on the rate of rise and his prior values, tumor markers aren’t necessarily worse than imaging. They aren’t necessarily better, but the decision to initiate non-curative therapy (which is all therapy for relapsed pancreatic cancer) is fundamentally a judgment call.
I always preferred measurable disease to evaluable disease. Tumor markers in general are just to volatile, too subject to non-malignant disease, and I never liked to use them as a sole marker of response or progression unless absolutely necessary with only a few exceptions for things like germ cell tumors and maybe HCC.
I admit that I was thinking more about germ cell tumors when I replied, but also non-cancer things like mold infections where biomarkers aren’t exactly reliable but – in the appropriate context – can be a useful indicator of disease burden. Of course, outside of a clinical trial it’s largely an academic point, since the decision to treat based on CA19-9 or based on CT results isn’t going to affect the outcome.
In Trebek’s case, he seems to have tolerated treatment fairly well and recurrent pancreatic CA doesn’t always show up well on scans. He seems to have a good KPS so will probably tolerate therapy well again and if he doesn’t have any residual neuropathy from the oxaliplatin, nab-paclitaxel, or CDDP, the risks are probably low and treatment isn’t terribly unreasonable as long as the CA 19-9 has been rising steadily on multiple blood draws over a reasonable time frame.On the other hand, systemic treatment for pancreatic CA still doesn’t improve OAS all that much, although it is better than it was when gemcitabine was first approved for it. The main goal is symptom control and improvement in quality of life. If he has no symptoms and good QOL, what exactly are the goals of treatment? If he is healthy now, you are mostly hoping to prevent deterioration of those in the future and it is harder to prove that you can do that.It is also possible he is enrolled in a trial which is dictating (or at least recommending) restarting therapy based on markers. If he was, I wish he would say so. It might encourage others to enroll.There are still a lot of details I am guessing at. I never even heard the pathology, but I am assuming adenoCA. The “immunotherapy” is interesting because none is really approved broadly for pancreatic CA so that suggests some kind of mutation that makes him eligible for a PARP inhibitor, checkpoint inhibitor, or clinical trial. I could give a better opinion if I knew those details.
You are correct, and I’m happy that Trebek has done so well to this point. My mother passed from pancreatic this spring. She thought she had a stomach problem and after several unsuccessful treatments by a gastroenterologist, got a MRI that discovered spots on her liver. It’s not the pancreas part that’s dangerous, it’s that there are no symptoms until it’s very late-stage and has spread all over the place, and – most insidiously – doesn’t show up in blood work. She lasted three months from diagnosis.
So sorry. Hope you are doing well.
Sorry to hear that. Experienced the exact same thing with my dad 17 years ago. Didn’t find it until it had metastasized to his liver and he was dead within 2 months of diagnosis. Fuck cancer.
Apparently that’s a common pattern, to the point that MRIs should probably be standard early on for people with stubborn stomach problems.
Sorry, bfred. My own mother died of it 12 years ago, 4 days from diagnosis to death, and she also felt like she had stomach problems. It was a horrible shock and we still miss her
I wish I could be optimistic, but I’ve seen what pancreatic cancer can do. Trebek was stage IV when it was detected. At that stage, you have a 1-3% of making it to five years.
That really sucks. I was surprised he bounced back from Stage 4 cancer so quickly. Generally that’s a death sentence and the few people who are able to hang on are fighting for quite a while.
I’m surprised he stopped chemo at all, unless he’s decided he’d rather go out on his terms and doesn’t want the public to know. Usually at stage four chemo is basically forever, and most patients decide it’s worse than the symptoms.
As someone who has had two close family members go from cancer, I remember the scary words of one of the doctors who treated my sister. Once you had cancer, you are never really ever “cancer free” again. The best you can ever be is done fighting for a while. My sister fought a brain tumor until that bastard played dead for 10 years but it was just resting up for the second round. It won that one.
I hope Alex beat this bastard down too and lives every day to it fullest.
Amen.Sorry for your losses, friend.
I’ve lost two dear friends to cancer this summer, both of them 25 years younger than Alex. Can’t stand the thought of losing him too.
Sorry for your losses, friend. Fuck cancer.
I know that feeling. When you think your all good but then something happens out of the blue. My mom beat cancer three times. Forth time got her. Its a horrible thing.