"Jeopardy" host Alex Trebek this week gave an update on his stage four pancreatic cancer treatment, saying that it is paying off and that "I'm feeling great."
But in an interview with The New York Times published Friday, Trebek said that if his current cancer treatment fails, he plans to stop treatment altogether.
"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,” Trebek told the Times. “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.”
Trebek, who turns 80 on Wednesday, has hosted "Jeopardy" since 1984.
With no new episodes due to the coronavirus pandemic, Trebek has been at home, recording introductions to classic episodes.
Trebek said he is bothered that, as more people retreat into ideological bubbles these days, facts are no longer a common ground.
"The sun is up in the sky. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to change that. You can’t say, ‘The sun’s not up there, there’s no sky.’ There is reality, and there’s nothing wrong with accepting reality," Trebek said. "It’s when you try to distort reality, to maneuver it into accommodating your particular point of view, your particular bigotry, your particular whatever — that’s when you run into problems.”
Trebek's memoir, “The Answer Is …: Reflections on My Life,” will be released Tuesday.
Trebek said he'll stop hosting "Jeopardy" when he feels his performance start slipping.