NBC’s Tom Brokaw Shows Blood Cancer Can Be a Chronic Disease– Announces Official Retirement 8 Years After Diagnosis

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In a statement about his retirement, Tom Brokaw said, “During one of the most complex and consequential eras in American history, a new generation of NBC News journalists, producers and technicians is providing America with timely, insightful and critically important information, 24/7, I could not be more proud of them.”

Tom’s Cancer Battle

SurvivorNet went to see the long-time NBC News journalist to talk about his experience with cancer and how he's learned to live with it in the years since his diagnosis. Brokaw is currently being treated for a blood cancer called multiple myeloma. He may have slowed down physically, but his journalistic ambition and desire to be part of the national dialogue has not. Brokaw was working on a book about Richard Nixon when we met, and volunteering – saying that those thing and "politics keep me distracted from cancer."

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Brokaw says he keeps his focus off his cancer. “I’m not dwelling on this cancer all the time. ‘I’ve got a fatal cancer’ I don’t wake up thinking that way.” Brokaw is a man engaged with his life; he’s a fisherman, a climber, an outdoorsman. And pain led him to see a doctor, which led to his diagnosis. “So one summer, my back was just persistently painful, and I had a very, very smart internist who was my primary care doctor. And on his own, he drew some blood, and he spent one morning doing what they call evidentiary medicine.”

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“He was deducting all the possibilities. And by noon, he went to a chief oncologist at the Mayo Clinic, and he said, “I think Tom Brokaw has got multiple myeloma.” I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Talking about proteins, bone invasion, and a hole in your hip. Finally, I went into my journalistic mode. How long? What are the chances? What are the treatments? Personal side was, my God, am I going to die? Are we all right in our family? Do we have everything arranged? I’ve had a life that was so trouble-free, and suddenly I was looking at this deep, dark hole.”

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Brokaw didn’t stay in that dark hole, though. He said, “I didn’t want to be the victim.”

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