News 4’s Don Postles shares a health update

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – Longtime News 4 anchor Don Postles has been off the air for the past few weeks. Tonight, he wanted to update the community about his health.

Don shared that he is recovering and in good spirits after needing to have a cancerous tumor removed from his face. He hopes to return to the anchor desk soon alongside Jacquie Walker.

“The good news is they believe they got it all,” Don said. “I don’t need any chemo or radiation. They’re going to keep an eye on it and keep checking. And hopefully I will make a full recovery.”

Subscribe to our email newsletters and breaking news alerts

The full message from Don is below.

Hello there! Many of you have been asking “where have I been?” Well, I wish I could say I was on a sabbatical and taking a cruise in the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I had a medical setback.

A few months ago, I went like this and touched my face, and I found a lump and I went to my dermatologist Dr. Michael Nazareth and he said I have some kind of growth on my parotid gland, that’s your saliva gland. You have one here and one here. He recommended I see Dr. Thom Loree at ECMC who is a specialist in this kind of stuff. And it turns out they took out this tumor and when the pathology report came back, it confirmed it was a low-grade cancerous tumor.

That’s the bad news. The good news is they believe they got it all. I don’t need any chemo or radiation. They’re going to keep an eye on it and keep checking. And hopefully I will make a full recovery.

The bad thing about having that kind of a surgery that – you’re seeing in some of the pictures I shared with my team – is that you have five fingers of nerves across your face and those nerves during the trauma can sometimes have to regenerate so I can get full movement of my mouth and my eyelid. And once that happens, I will be back in the anchor chair alongside my colleague Jacquie Walker. I can’t wait to get back, I feel blessed, I thank you for your well wishes, and your concerns.

You can leave well-wishes for Don in the comments on our Facebook post.