NBC’s “Today” show weatherman, Al Roker, announced that he has prostate cancer and will be taking time off work to have surgery to remove his prostate.
“It’s a good news-bad news kind of thing, 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.
Roker expressed that the diagnosis is common in African American men.
“It’s a little more common than I think people realize, so I just decided that I wanted to go public with it because one in nine men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime,” Roker said. ” But for African-American men, that number is one in seven and is more deadly, so if you detect it early, this is a really treatable disease, and it’s why I wanted to take you along my journey so we can all learn together.”
Roker will have surgery next week. During a segment on Today, he brought his surgeon on to talk about his situation.
