Jean Trebek revealed the moment she noticed her husband Alex Trebek didn’t seem his usual self in a recent blog post.
Alex, 80, announced he’d been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in March 2019, with Jean, 56, saying she noticed something “off” with him during a vacation in Israel.
“We’d gone to Israel to visit the sites of the Holy Land in December 2018, taking our son and daughter, Matthew and Emily, then 27 and 24.
“We’d finished dinner one night, and I looked across the table at Alex. His colouring seemed off. ‘You feeling okay?’ I asked,” Jean, who married Alex in 1990, wrote in her Guideposts blog.
“‘I’m good,’” she remembered the “Jeopardy!” host telling her. “Alex is not one to complain. But he admitted that he was having some stomach pains. I figured, okay, we were in a different country. Maybe it was something he ate.”
However, she said things “were still not right” when the couple returned to California, writing: “His doctor ran some tests, then some more. We weren’t so worried that we cancelled a trip to New York.”
However, after receiving a concerning call from Trebek’s doctor, they headed back home.
Jean continued, “It was there [New York], in our hotel, that we got a call from his doctor. ‘We need to see you as soon as you get back from your trip. We have some concerns.’
“He went in for a CT scan—all of this at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, not far from our house. The doctor called back within hours. ‘We need to talk,’ he said. We went back and got the news. Pancreatic cancer with a tumour that had spread to the soft lining of his stomach. Stage IV.”
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Jean said that despite being understandably devastated at first, she’s now learnt to appreciate every second with Alex.
Jean admitted, “It felt as if the bottom dropped out of my world.
“Alex has been everything to me. I met him when I was 21, a challenging period in my life. His friendship—we were friends for a long time before becoming a couple—changed my life.”
“I wondered then how long we had,” she wrote. “More than a year and a half later, we’re still at it, every day a gift.
“With each passing day, I have found so much to be grateful for. Alex’s work. Our kids, our friends, a sunset, a flower blooming in our garden.”
She added: “This didn’t have to be a death sentence. It could be a life sentence. A constant reminder of how precious life is. The smallest things that I once took for granted now carry more meaning. I think that is how God keeps us in the moment. He focuses us with grace.”
