Longtime TODAY Show meteorologist Al Roker announced that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will be undergoing surgery to have his prostate removed.
Roker said he wanted to publicly reveal his diagnosis to spotlight the fact that 1 in 7 African American men, 1 in 9 men overall, will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
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“It’s a good news-bad news kind of thing,” Roker 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.”
Al will be undergoing surgery next week at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where Dr. Vincent Laudone will perform the procedure.
.@AlRoker discusses the surgery he will undergo next week to remove his prostate. pic.twitter.com/hbNolSVUHA
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 6, 2020
“I don’t want people thinking, ‘Oh, poor Al,’ you know, because I’m gonna be OK,” Roker said.
“Fortunately his cancer appears somewhat limited or confined to the prostate, but 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,” Laudone said on TODAY.