'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek marks 1-year with stage IV pancreatic cancer

It seems that ironically, this game show host has truly beaten the odds.

Jeopardy television game show host Alex Trebek speaks on stage during the 40th annual Daytime Emmy Awards in Beverly Hills, California June 16, 2013. (photo credit: DANNY MOLOSHOK/ REUTERS)
Jeopardy television game show host Alex Trebek speaks on stage during the 40th annual Daytime Emmy Awards in Beverly Hills, California June 16, 2013.
(photo credit: DANNY MOLOSHOK/ REUTERS)
Canadian-American television personality and host of the popular game show Jeopardy! Alex Trebek announced that he had successfully completed a year of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in 2019.
In a video uploaded to Jeopardy!'s official social media accounts, Trebek said that though the survival rate for stage IV pancreatic cancer was only 18%, he's made it nonetheless.

"I’d be lying if I said the journey had been an easy one," he said in the video.
"There were some good days but a lot of not-so-good days. I joked with friends that the cancer won’t kill me; the chemo treatments will. There were moments of great pain, days when certain bodily functions no longer functioned and sudden, massive attacks of great depression that made me wonder if it really was worth fighting on.
However, Trebek said he was able to dismiss these feelings, explaining that it would be "a massive betrayal – a betrayal of my wife and soulmate, Jean, who has given her all to help me survive. It would have been a betrayal of other cancer patients who have looked to me as an inspiration and a cheerleader of sorts, of the value of living and hope and it would certainly have been a betrayal of my faith in God and the millions of prayers that have been said on my behalf."
Trebek, who has hosted Jeopardy! for 35 years and is contacted to continue doing so until 2022, mentioned that the survival rate for two years with stage IV pancreatic cancer was 7%. However, his oncologist said that he "was certain that one year from now, the two of us would be sitting in his office celebrating my second anniversary of survival."
It seems that ironically, this game show host has truly beaten the odds.