Ready for Something Nice? Alex Trebek’s Cancer Is in “Near Remission”

Alex Trebek, aka the man responsible for filling your head with trivia both useless and otherwise, has some great news. The 78-year-old host of the insanely long-running Jeopardy! (35 years!) tells PEOPLE his pancreatic cancer is in “near remission,” according to his doctors.

Trebek explained:

It’s kind of mind-boggling. The doctors said they hadn’t seen this kind of positive result in their memory … Some of the tumors have already shrunk by more than 50 percent.

The television icon revealed his diagnosis in March of this year, and the prognosis did not look good; the five-year survival rate for stage four pancreatic cancer is just 3%. Though, as PEOPLE stresses, Trebek is “not out of the woods yet,” in a world where seemingly every news story is worse than the last, it’s nice to see some positivity for a change.