Much loved gorgeous Greek American television host Maria Menounos had a seven-hour surgery to remove a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. The tumor thankfully was a benign meningioma and was successfully removed.
Her mother, Litsa Menounos, is currently fighting stage 4 brain cancer. "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,'" she told People (on newsstands this week). "The next week I started feeling better, so I was like, 'I'm clearly paranoid.' So I kept pushing the MRI."
In April, Maria had the scan and later learned she had a brain tumor called a meningioma. "I didn't cry. I actually laughed," she tells the magazine. "At that point, it was like, 'This is a joke."
Maria told her parents about her diagnosis days before undergoing surgery. "Both of them just welled up," she recalls. "They were just in shock, but we kept reassuring them it would be fine."
A doctor told her there's a 6 to 7 per cent chance the tumour may return but Maria remains positive with the outcome. She has told media she doesn't have full balance yet and her face is still numb.
Maria has now stepped down as E! co-anchor and will spend time recovering.
