It was only three months ago that iconic Jeopardy host Alex Trebek made a special announcement to fans, breaking the news that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
"I have some news to share with all of you and it's in keeping with my longtime policy of being open and transparent with our Jeopardy! fan base," he said in a video message. "I also wanted to prevent you from reading or hearing some overblown or inaccurate reports regarding my health. So therefore, I wanted to be the one to pass along this information."
Here's the video message Trebek shared with fans"Now, just like 50,000 other people in the United States each year, this week I was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Now normally, the prognosis for this is not very encouraging, but I'm going to fight this, and I'm going to keep working.
"And with the love and support of my family and friends and with the help of your prayers also, I plan to beat the low survival rate statistics for this disease. Truth told, I have to! Because under the terms of my contract, I have to host Jeopardy! for three more years! So help me. Keep the faith and we'll win. We'll get it done. Thank you."
More recently, Trebek had much better news to share with his fanbase. Not only is he in good health, but according to his doctors, he's in "near remission".
“It’s kind of mind-boggling,” the 78-year-old said in an interview with People, after appearing in their cover story this month. “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.”
While Trebek's cancer has only a nine per cent survival rate, the TV star has been responding incredibly well to chemotherapy - though he will have to undergo several more rounds before he hits full remission.
“They were tears of joy, not tears of depression,” he tells People, recounting the emotional moment he found out about his new status. As far as his health goes, he credits the well wishes he received from his fans for the progress he made.
"I’ve got a couple million people out there who have expressed their good thoughts, their positive energy directed towards me and their prayers. 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."
"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."
Hopefully, Trebek's journey to remission goes as planned and he manages to conquer the disease as soon as possible.