Maria Menounos diagnosed with brain tumour while mum battles stage 4 brain cancer
Maria Menounos, 39, is now on the mend after undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. The shocking diagnosis comes as her mother, Litsa Menounos, is currently fighting stage 4 brain cancer.
The US TV presenter and journalist told People in this week's cover story, "This February I thought I had an ear infection so I went to a doctor, and he said, 'Your ears are the cleanest things I've ever seen. What else are you feeling?' I'd been getting light-headed on-set and having headaches. My speech had gotten slurred, and I was having difficulty reading the teleprompter. I said, 'I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but I think I have a brain tumor like my mom.' He said, 'I don't think you're crazy. Let's just get an MRI."
Image: Getty
"The next week I started feeling better, so I was like, 'I'm clearly paranoid.' So I kept pushing the MRI."
Maria finally had the scan in April and discovered she had a benign brain tumour called a meningioma.
"I didn't cry. I actually laughed," she said. "At that point, it was like, 'This is a joke."
She told her parents about her diagnosis only days before undergoing surgery on June 8, her 39th birthday.
"Both of them just welled up," she recalled. "They were just in shock, but we kept reassuring them it would be fine."
She explained that her doctor removed "99.9 percent of it," but said there's a 6 to 7 percent chance her tumor will return. "I'll take those odds any day," said Maria.
