Al Roker Reveals First Sign Of Issues That Led To Medical Scare

It’s been a little over a year since a major health scare kept TODAY weatherman Al Roker out of the studio for several weeks. Now, Al is revealing the first small sign that alerted him to the issue: a reading from his smartwatch.

The revelation came during a July 25, 2024, segment on the TODAY show. During the segment, Peloton producer Jessie Malone, 35, shared how an Apple Watch notification alerted her to symptoms of atrial fibrillation.

“We share something in common,” Al told her during the segment. “I had a health scare about a year and a half ago, and I first noticed because, walking up the stairs, my watch said that (my heart rate) was 160 beats per minute,” he recalled.

“I called my doctor and was able to take care of this,” he said.

The next day, Al was vomiting and had severe pain, TODAY.com previously reported. At first, his doctor suspected he was dealing with an intestinal infection. But, after some imaging tests, the true cause of Al’s issues was revealed: He’d developed blood clots, some of which had migrated from his leg to his lungs.

Al was rushed to the hospital, kicking off weeks of what he called at the time “medical whack-a-mole.”

The medical team discovered that Al also had two bleeding ulcers, which required a seven-hour surgery to resection his colon. And surgeons also had to remove his gallbladder and redo his duodenum, a part of the small intestine.

Due to the ordeal, Al was forced to take a break from the show. And he had to skip hosting both the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 2022.

Looking back on his medical scare a year later, Al told TODAY.com that the severity of his case and his age may have made his recovery more challenging. But his positive attitude helped him during the journey.

“(I thought) well, what are you going to do? I’m just going to get better, and here we go, it’s next year,” Al said. “I’m not one much for looking back. I would prefer to look forward.”