Nov. 6, 2020 -- Veteran television weatherman Al Roker told his Today show audience Friday that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Roker, 66, told viewers he will leave the show for a while to have surgery.
“It’s a good news-bad news kind of thing,” he said. “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 said he shared the news to highlight the fact that one in seven Black men, and one in nine men overall, will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
Vincent Laudone, MD, will perform the surgery next week at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Roker said.
“We’ll just wait and see and, hopefully, in about 2 weeks I’ll be back,” he said.
Laudone told Today that Roker’s cancer “appears somewhat limited or confined to the prostate.” But, he said, “because it’s more aggressive, we wanted to treat it, and after discussion regarding all of the different options -- surgery, radiation, focal therapy -- we settled on removing the prostate.”
The Prostate Cancer Foundation recommends all men be tested for prostate cancer in their 40s. If you have a family history of prostate, ovarian, breast, colon, or pancreatic cancer, the foundation recommends getting screened for the first time at 40.