Comedian Jeff Ross Reveals How Doctor Jokingly Delivered His Colon Cancer Diagnosis: 'Good News and Bad News'

During a June 18 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Jeff Ross revealing a savage joke that his doctor delivered while sharing his colon cancer diagnosis
"My oncologist was like, 'Jeff, the good news and bad news. The bad news is you're going to need six months of chemo. The good news is you lost your hair a long time ago,' " he recalled
Ross had 7 inches of his colon surgically removed in the summer of 2024Jeff Ross can appreciate a joke, even in the most dire situations.
The 59-year-old comedian, known as the "roast master general" for his performances in celebrity roasts over the years, even found some humor in a joke his doctor delivered when he was diagnosed with colon cancer.
During a Wednesday, June 18, appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Ross reflected on his diagnosis and having seven inches of his colon removed via laparoscopic surgery in the summer of 2024.
Recalling the moment that he learned about the diagnosis, he said that his doctor shared it with a savage joke.
"My oncologist was like, 'Jeff, the good news and bad news. The bad news is you're going to need six months of chemo. The good news is you lost your hair a long time ago,' " he shared.
Ross explained that he was diagnosed after having his first colonoscopy at the urging of a friend.
"I was already in my 50's, and I'd never gotten a colonoscopy," he admitted. "I went in, I had no symptoms, and I had a tumor in my colon. You always think it's never going to happen to you, and it happened to me."
He poked fun at losing some of his colon, saying, "Now I have a semicolon."
His surgery and remaining scars also provided some material for a joke: "You know, I had laparoscopic surgery so I have holes around here [singalling his torso and chest]. Little holes. I'm like 50 Cent if instead of getting shot, he ate pastrami twice a week for 50 years."
Ross addresses his cancer diagnosis and treatment in his one-man show Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride, which is heading to Broadway for the summer.
Speaking to The Minnesota Star Tribune in March 2025, he said that he was "still trying to figure it out" regarding incorporating the experience into the act.
"I don't want the show to be maudlin, but I think it's important to address it," he said. "Norm [Macdonald, his close friend who died in 2021] was very private and hid his sickness. I didn't think that was fair to the audience and his friends, so I'm putting it out there. But I don't want people to feel sorry for me. It's going to be a very empowering and bold statement on how to get through tough times."
The comedian's brush with cancer isn't the only medical emergency that he's approached in a joking manner.
In April 2025, Ross revealed that he spent the night in an emergency room after developing a serious allergic reaction to something that he ate.
"It was my first allergic reaction ever," he wrote on Instagram at the time. "I guess that's pretty remarkable considering I'm constantly shoving whatever food is in front of me into my face."
Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Speaking to Jimmy Kimmel, Ross joked about his dramatically swollen appearance triggered by the reaction, "It looks like I got hit in the face with some nunchucks."
Since they have "no idea" what he caused the reaction, he added that he will need to carry an EpiPen "for the rest of my life until it happens again."
"I'm like a little kid with a peanut allergy," he teased.
Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride opens on Broadway on August 5 at the Nederlander Theatre. Ticket information is available here.
Read the original article on People

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Washington Post

26 minutes ago

• Washington Post

‘The Berlin Diaries' is a twisting and resonant search for lost family

Playwright Andrea Stolowitz is a central character in her own 'The Berlin Diaries.' She is played by Dina Thomas in a delicately moving production at D.C.'s Theater J — except when she's played by actor Lawrence Redmond, who also inhabits the long-dead grandfather whose inherited journals set the show's affairs in motion. Except when Redmond is stepping into the role of the playwright's Uncle David. Or one of a dozen other characters, based everywhere from Brazil to South Africa to New York to the Pacific Northwest. With me? Fret not: If the play's structural quirkiness initially feels adventurous to the point of mild madness, it quickly reveals a method, even as its novelty settles into something like normalcy. In fact the dialogue-juggling — in which the two actors often divide a thought mid-phrase while inhabiting the same character — deftly suggests the sort of wait-who-was-that? conundrums that any genealogist grappling with a knotty ancestral puzzle might get tangled in. For instance, I bear the same name as both my father and my grandfather, and there's another handful perched a few generations back in the family tree. This means that 'No, the Thomas who was killed when a branch fell on him in 1762 was a farmer; his son Thomas was the Presbyterian minister,' is the kind of thing I find myself clarifying mid-story, as if anyone other than a desperate family-history nerd could possibly follow. One intriguing dynamic with 'Berlin Diaries' is precisely that Andrea Stolowitz, or at least the character with her name, doesn't seem that sort of nerd at all. She's a mildly jaded playwright and teaching artist whose family isn't all that large or all that close, and who's not particularly interested in the diary her mother has been saving all this time. Yes, they're Jewish, and yes, they emigrated from Germany — but as Uncle David shrugs, 'Everyone made it here alive. … There's nothing to find out.' Unconvinced, but also under-inspired, and entirely uncertain what she's actually looking for, Andrea does what teaching artists do when confronted with things like old diaries: She writes a grant proposal and takes off for Europe. Unsurprisingly, she'll uncover rather more than Uncle David's shrug suggests, and in its clean 90 minutes 'Berlin Diaries' chronicles developments as concrete as confusion about a street address and as esoteric as the singular frisson that comes with stumbling across a headstone and knowing that a faded name on a dusty page really lived and died in this actual place, at that actual time. And its protagonist will confront the reality that even now, even after decades of diligent documentation, even given the famously meticulous recordkeeping that accompanied the Holocaust, it's possible for people — for whole swaths of whole families — simply to be verschollen, lost. Theater J's handsome production, steered with a light touch and admirable clarity by director Elizabeth Dinkova, deploys warm woods (in a set by Sarah Beth Hall) and plenty of papers (props are from Pamela Weiner), along with one of the most quietly lyrical visual vocabularies I've seen in a theater lately. (Colin K. Bills is responsible for the lighting, and Deja Collins the subtle and exquisite suite of projections.) Redmond and Thomas navigate a tricky script with the ease of veterans and a wry, low-key charm that helps find an appropriate unifying tone for a narrative that involves the soberest of considerations — but also at least one anatomical joke and (rather boldly) the employment of mild sarcasm in the vicinity of the words 'never forget.' And Stolowitz manages, without belaboring or dwelling on grim specifics, to convey the quiet horror of discovering the name of a lost relative in the same moment you realizing that that person's story is largely and irremediably lost. 'He who forgets what he cannot change is happy,' muses Andrea at one point, echoing a line from her grandfather's journal, though it's not clear she can bring herself to agree. 'The Berlin Diaries' will resonate, and vividly, with audiences who caught Tom Stoppard's similarly aching family chronicle 'Leopoldstadt' at the Shakespeare Theatre Company late last year – and I should imagine with any member of a Jewish American generation whose parents and grandparents simply couldn't bear to pass on the stories of the lost. The Berlin Diaries, through June 29 at Theater J. About 90 minutes without intermission.

Yahoo

41 minutes ago

• Yahoo

Were Arachnophobes Bugged by Criminal Minds? Is Resident Alien's Joseph Gone for Good? Did Steamy Adults Kiss Launch ‘Ship? More Qs!

We've got questions, and you've (maybe) got answers! With another week of TV gone by, we're lobbing queries left and right about Criminal Minds: Evolution, Adults, Nine Perfect Strangers, Destination X and more! 1 | On last week's , was Joseph's gory, torn-up face (and missing arm!) more disgusting or hysterical? And do you think this will be the last time we ever see Enver Gjokaj? More from TVLine Did John Wick Flick Do TWD Vet Dirty? Did The Chi Devastate? Will Glee 4-Peat at Tonys? Who Has Never Heard of Sabrina Carpenter?! More TV Qs! Is Doctor Who Reunion Inevitable? Did Cleaning Lady Kiss Leave You Cold? How Would SNL Have Handled Trump/ Musk Break-Up? More TV Qs! Glad The Last of Us Spared Dog? Did Rehearsal Give You High Anxiety? Did Survivor 50 Need Fan Input? Vexing Organized Crime Absences? More Qs! 2 | How did The Walking Dead: Dead City's Negan manage to haul a ventilator out of Bellevue and back to the church? 3 | Bravo fans, were you surprised to see that the only match that managed to stick was Luann and James? And would you watch another season of Housewives selecting from a bevy of men in a tropical locale? 4 | Watching The Last Supper get underway on , was anyone else distracted by the fact that the disciples' candles were (and remained) the exact same height and clearly weren't melting? 5 | The Pitt's Dr. Shen appears to 'run on Dunkin',' so we have to ask: What do you think his go-to order is? Is it just a classic iced coffee with cream and sugar? Or do we think he's more of a frozen coffee or iced latte-kinda guy? 6 | On Fox's , should shamelessly manipulative Kethryn's on-screen ID be changed from 'Tech Manager' to 'People Manager'? Also, could the gameplay on this show possibly be any more simplistic? 1) Compete in gross-out challenge to become Snake! 2) Scheme! 3) Vote someone out! 7 | Were you surprised by how easily 's Shayne chose his bro Biggy over his love interest Ally in that vase-shattering challenge? And was that big elimination twist a little underwhelming considering how easily Tai believed Biggy's lie right off the bat? 8 | Should the Ted Lasso writers be compensated every time the new Goldfish crackers commercial — featuring another familiar face from Saturday Night Live, Please Don't Destroy's Ben Marshall — airs on television? 9 | Are you officially 'shipping Adults' Anton and Paul Baker after that steamy kiss in the season finale? And how badly do we need to see a Season 2 to find out how this whole mess turns out? 10 | No shade to ' Nancy, but did you have a certain sense about Hamish's sexual preferences from literally the first moment he was on screen at the pool? 11 | Although it made complete sense, weren't you still a little disappointed with how little we got to see of Guy in The Buccaneers Season 2 premiere? And didn't Nelle and Nan look more like sisters than mother and daughter? 12 | Be honest, Nine Perfect Strangers viewers: How many of you were already suspecting that Helena twist might be a thing? 13 | On , were you definitely expecting something terrible to happen when Carrie drove off on an ATV unsupervised, and then shocked when she somehow arrived unscathed? And was Harry's elderly father surprisingly cool with it when Lily's dancer boyfriend announced he's poly? 14 | What was with Rebecca's sudden glam-up this week on Criminal Minds: Evolution? What was the point of giving Voit a new, better lawyer… if the guy didn't get to be? Also, how are the arachnophobics out there among you faring? Hit the comments with your answers and any TV Qs of your own! Best of TVLine 20+ Age-Defying Parent-Child Castings From Blue Bloods, ER, Ginny & Georgia, Golden Girls, Supernatural and More Young Sheldon Easter Eggs: Every Nod to The Big Bang Theory (and Every Future Reveal) Across 7 Seasons Weirdest TV Crossovers: Always Sunny Meets Abbott, Family Guy vs. Simpsons, Nine-Nine Recruits New Girl and More

Vogue

41 minutes ago

• Vogue

Haim Isn't Answering to Anyone

Danielle Haim is in the middle of explaining her songwriting process when she's interrupted by a call on her hotel phone. 'One second,' she says. Luckily, her siblings Alana and Este, who round out the band Haim, are there to fill the void, performing a rapid-fire riff—a sister act, if you will. 'You have a caller! Who is it?' Alana asks. 'Is it mom?' Este wonders. 'It's probably mom,' Alana concludes. Photo: Heidi Stanton The trio have always been close, but their synchronicity has never been more apparent than on their fourth studio album, I Quit, out today. On its face, the record—co-produced by Danielle and Rostam Batmanglij, formerly of Vampire Weekend—is a breakup album, largely inspired by Danielle's split from Ariel Rechtshaid, who produced the band's previous three records. Over its 15 tracks, the record travels from the lusty beginnings of a romance to the grief of its dissolution and the catharsis of finding closure. But present throughout is a sense of ecstasy: in album opener 'Gone'—with its sample from George Michael's 'Freedom! '90'—and the jubilant, Alana-led 'Spinning,' all the way through to the percussive closer, 'Now It's Time.' 'I wish I could tell you there was some huge blowup with my past relationship. The real story is just two people that lost each other,' Danielle says. 'There's a lot of love there. I think we made really great music with my ex, and he's such a genius producer, but I think I really found so much strength in producing this with Rostam. I really feel like it's our best work.'