We’ll take “Don’t Go Breaking Our Hearts†for $200, Alex. Ahead of the release of his new memoir The Answer Is … Reflections on My Life on July 21, the New York Times caught up with America’s quizmaster general Alex Trebek in quarantine to, well, do some reflecting on his life. The good news is Trebek has been keeping busy in quarantine making repairs around the house and recording episode introductions for the upcoming four-week Jeopardy! retrospective series. Trebek says that being able to tape these videos for the show “‘is some kind of elixir.’†However, a year out from his advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis, the Times writes, “Trebek’s prognosis has worsened. If his current course of cancer treatment fails, he plans to stop treatment.â€
“Yesterday morning my wife came to me and said, ‘How are you feeling?’ And I said, ‘I feel like I want to die.’ It was that bad,†he said. “There comes a time where you have to make a decision as to whether you want to continue with such a low quality of life, or whether you want to just ease yourself into the next level. It doesn’t bother me in the least.â€
Trebek has been open about his struggles with cancer since his stage-four diagnosis in March of 2019 and his relapse that September, talking frankly about the pain and depression he’s lived with as he fights it with rounds of chemotherapy, all while continuing to host Jeopardy!. In this interview with the Times, Trebek said that he “plans to keep making the show for as long as he can, but he worries that his performance is declining, that he’s slurring his words and messing up clues. ‘It’s a quality program, and I think I do a good job hosting it, and when I start slipping, I’ll stop hosting,’ he said.â€