Maria Menounos has revealed she survived a fight with stage 2 pancreatic cancer.
The former E! News host, who in 2017 opened up about having surgery to remove a brain tumor, tells People that she was diagnosed in January and had surgery the next month to remove a pancreatic tumor.
After suffering from painful leg cramps, she went to the hospital, where she learned she had type 1 diabetes, which runs in her family. As she dealt with that “new diagnosis” through insulin and a strict diet, she started experiencing “excruciating abdominal pain coupled with diarrhea.”
At one point she felt “like someone was tearing my insides out.”
Though a CT scan and extensive testing showed nothing, she tells People, she had a full-body MRI, which showed a 3.9 cm mass that was later revealed to be a stage 2 pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor.
“I’m like ‘How in the freaking world can I have a brain tumor and pancreatic cancer?’ ” she says, adding that she was thinking about how she and husband Keven Undergaro were expecting a baby girl, which is due this summer via surrogate.
In February, she had surgery to remove the tumor as well as part of her pancreas, her spleen, a large fibroid and 17 lymph nodes.
“It was super painful,” she says of the experience and recovery. “I couldn’t move or lift myself up.”
Menounos’ doctors tell People that she appears to be doing well and won’t need chemotherapy or additional treatment beyond scans for the next five years.
“I’m so grateful and so lucky,” she says. “God granted me a miracle. “I’m going to appreciate having [my daughter] in my life so much more than I would have before this journey.”
In 2017, Menounos left E! News, where she’d been an anchor since 2015, as she revealed she had surgery to remove a golf-ball-size brain tumor amid her mother’s battle with stage 4 brain cancer. Her mother died in 2021.
