Feeling Better, Legendary CT Meteorologist Geoff Fox Returns To WTNH-TV Monday

Though his first appearance is scheduled to debut on Monday, July 3, during the 5 p.m. newscast on Channel 8 WTNH-TV, meteorologist Geoff Fox has been hard at work over the past few days preparing for his summer debut.

In a post on his blog, the longtime WTNH-TV weather forecaster, who was fired in 2011, Fox described some of the work he and the station's Sam Kantrow and McKenzie Kotuby have been doing long distance (Fox lives in California) to get the logistics ready for the telecast. Fortunately, he's pretty well practiced in shooting a long-distance weather segment from his home studio, something he's been doing for News Channel Nebraska for some time.

All this would not be possible if his surgery and treatment for pancreatic cancer had not gone as well as it has over the past year.

"We're done with all my cancer treatment, but we still basically have an army of doctors I have to see all the time, and the commute from Connecticut would be murder," he said in a video on his Facebook page. (SIGN UP: Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time News Alerts. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

His last day of chemotherapy was June 22, and over the past year Fox has chronicled his cancer battle with funny and touching posts on the blog and Facebook, which his legion of fans and well-wishers have gobbled up en masse.

"I wouldn’t wish cancer on my worst enemy," he wrote on the blog. "Actually, I really don’t know what cancer feels like. What grief I’ve suffered is 100% a product of my treatment!"

Fox said he and his doctors timed his chemotherapy so that the effects of the sickness the treatments cause would be on the weekends so that he could rest and start the following week feeling better.

The radiation and chemo came after the complex surgery he had last fall called a "Whipple procedure," or pancreaticoduodenectomy, which removes tumors from the pancreas.

"In a standard Whipple procedure, the surgeon removes the head of the pancreas, the gallbladder, part of the duodenum which is the uppermost portion of the small intestine, a small portion of the stomach called the pylorus, and the lymph nodes near the head of the pancreas," according to Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. "The surgeon then reconnects the remaining pancreas and digestive organs so that pancreatic digestive enzymes, bile, and stomach contents will flow into the small intestine during digestion. "

That procedure was largely a big success for Fox, who said the surgery essentially got all of the identifiable cancer in his body, and then the chemo did its job.

He's now cancer free, but he is quick to add that he is not in remission nor is he cured.

But starting Monday evening, we'll all get to see just how far from the abyss Geoff Fox has come.

Photo of Geoff Fox via his Facebook page