Al Roker has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The beloved weatherman announced his diagnosis on the Today show Friday (November 6), revealing that the cancer was discovered during a routine medical checkup on September 29.
“It’s a good news-bad news kind of thing,” he shared. “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.”
Roker added that he will undergo surgery next week at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City to have his prostate removed. “We’ll just wait and see, and hopefully in about two weeks, I’ll be back [on Today],” he said, noting that he does not “want people thinking, ‘Oh, poor Al’ because I’m gonna be OK.”
The 66-year-old explained that he chose to go public with his diagnosis because 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime "but for African American men that number's 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 my journey so we can all learn together how to educate and protect the men in our lives," Roker continued.
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