Al Roker explains why he’s been away from ‘Today’: blood clots in his leg and lungs
On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being a perfect score, how perfect are you? The TV weatherman had the perfect score, or so he thought.
Al Roker has been on the job since 1998, joining NBC News in Washington, DC. He has been with NBC for the past 22 years. With all that time in the newsroom, you imagine that he must have gained experience and wisdom, which has certainly proven to be true in some ways.
Today, he is co-anchor of weekday editions of the NBC Nightly News and Weekend Edition that airs live (except Monday) from a studio set in Rockefeller Plaza. That is where he found out why he was away from the anchor desk the past month — he had a blood clot on his leg that has since left him with a collapsed lung and he’s not 100 percent yet. At this point, it is unknown how long he’ll be able to be a part of the NBC News family.
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But that’s not why he’s been home for the past month. He has been away for another reason. The newsroom gossip at NBC News is that he’s been away for over a month because he is suffering from a case of what is called “the flu” — a disease that will make you dizzy, unable to see out of the most important eye in the world, feel horrible, and it is the same disease that has taken down his co-host and his best friend, Andrea Mitchell.
He is not “out sick” and he has not been laid off, but if he continues to be away for the coming months, NBC News may have to let him go.
When he was in the newsroom, he could do things only a TV anchor can do. At one point, he brought people back on the air for one of his