Al Roker announced on NBC's TODAY show that he's been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will have a surgical procedure to remove his prostate.
"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."
The 66-year-old weatherman and co-host decided to reveal his diagnosis in order to urge others, particularly Black men, to get regular checkups. Roker highlighted the fact that one in nine men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, but the odds are one in seven for African American men.
"The problem for African American men is that any number of reasons from genetics to access to health care, and so we want to make it available and let people know they got to get checked," he said while adding that cancer is treatable if detected early.
The father of three will be undergoing surgery next week and remains optimistic that he'll be back at work soon.
"We'll just wait and see, and hopefully in about two weeks, I'll be back," Roker said. "I don't want people thinking, 'Oh, poor Al,' you know, because I'm gonna be OK."
Source: TODAY
