Al Roker opens up on health scare: 'I'm blessed to be alive'
Al Roker returned to "Today" on Jan. 6 after a medical leave that began in November. Credit: NBC / Nathan Congleton
A relieved Al Roker is publicly detailing for the first time the life-threatening medical issues that kept him off "Today" for two months until his return this past Friday.
"I'm blessed to be alive," the Queens-born co-host and weather forecaster, 68, told People magazine in an interview with him and his NBC morning-show colleagues posted Wednesday. He had been hospitalized in early November with blood clots, and after surgery and treatment was discharged on Thanksgiving but quickly readmitted. After his second discharge he recuperated at home all December — missing his annual hosting of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Nov. 30 Rockefeller Center tree-lighting ceremony.
"It's good to be back," he told the magazine.
The health issue, he said, began in early November with severe early-morning stomach pains. His internist ran tests that showed pulmonary blood clots, and on Nov. 11 he checked into Manhattan's NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
After surgery and treatment, the health issue "seemed to have settled down," Roker told People. Considered "clinically stable," he was released to his wife, ABC News' senior national affairs correspondent Deborah Roberts, and family on Thanksgiving. Later that day, however, Roker felt faint and returned to the hospital with indications of internal hemorrhaging.
Doctors performed an operation identifying the source of the bleeding as a perforated duodenum, part of the small intestine. In a nearly seven-hour operation, they repaired it and, among other procedures, removed his gallbladder, the organ that stores bile secreted from the liver.
"Al's surgeon used the word 'catastrophic'," Roberts told People. "That was the clearest declaration of what we were up against." Roker's gastroenterologist, Dr. Felice Schnoll-Sussman, described the illness as "life-threatening," adding that "there were multiple times when things were quite serious."
Roker himself confessed, "For the most part, I have no idea what happened. It's Deborah's narrative in a way, because I was laying in bed. And it's like, 'OK, yeah, take some more blood. Yeah, give me a scan, whatever you got.' But Deborah was that rock and would liaison with the doctors."
"We missed him so much," co-anchor Savannah Guthrie told the magazine on the day of his return. Said fellow co-anchor Hoda Kotb, "When Al was gone, you knew there was this huge gaping hole," adding, "We love him."
Roker did not comment additionally Wednesday on Instagram or Facebook, his sole social-media platforms, after his announcement Dec. 21 that he was leaving Twitter.
