Alex Trebek Reveals Tumours Have Shrunk 50 Percent

Jeopardy! host, Alex Trebek, recently announced he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. 

The 78-year-old has now revealed that he’s in “near remission,” after doctors told him the tumours have shrunk by more than 50%.

Explaining to PEOPLE for their new cover story, the survival rate has a 9% chance, but he has responded very well to chemotherapy, “The doctors said they hadn’t seen this kind of positive result in their memory… some of the tumours have already shrunk by more than 50%.”

Alex does say that he’ll still have to go through several more rounds of chemotherapy to hopefully get into full remission — but the outcome so far is beyond his expectations.

He told PEOPLE that he got emotional when he was told the good news but insisted, “They were tears of joy, not tears of depression,” and furthers that because of his fans and wellwishers around the world, he is receiving the good news; “I’ve got a couple [of] 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 minimise the value of that.”

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