Al Roker Hopes To Save Lives With His Own Cancer Diagnosis

On Friday morning, “Today” co-host Al Roker revealed to the world he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“After a routine check-up in September, turns out I have prostate cancer. And it’s a good news-bad news kind of thing. The good news is we caught it early, not great news is that it’s a little aggressive so I’m going to be taking some time off to take care of this.”

While the news came as a shock to Roker, he has turned his focus to getting well soon and taking viewers along for the journey so that it can hopefully save someone else’s life.

“I just decided I want to go public with this because 1 in 9 men are going to be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. But, for African-American men that number is 1 in 7 and is more deadly. So, if you detect it early this is a really treatable disease and it’s why I wanted to take you along on my journey so we can all learn together, how to educate and protect the men in our lives.”

The 66-year-old weatherman will undergo surgery to remove his prostate at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. And afterwards? “We’ll just wait and see, and hopefully in about two weeks, I’ll be back (on TODAY),” Al said.

Of course, Roker has received an outpouring of love and support, and he has taken to Twitter to thank all of his fans.

I want to thank everyone sending all the good thoughts, wishes and prayers our way. Looking forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks. https://t.co/Pzjkc9MqkG

— Al Roker (@alroker) November 6, 2020

Let’s all keep Al Roker in our prayers!