Maria Menounos is recovering after undergoing surgery to remove a tumor from her brain.
The TV personality announced her mum Litsa was fighting brain cancer last August (16) and in a new in-depth interview with People magazine Maria has revealed that she has had her own health battle.
Explaining the worrying symptoms began in February (17), the brunette beauty told the publication, “I’d been getting lightheaded on set and having headaches. My speech had gotten slurred and I was having difficulty reading the teleprompter.”
It turns out that Maria, 39, had a golf ball-sized meningioma brain tumor that was affecting her facial nerves. These types of tumors are often slow-growing and non-harmful.
“I didn’t cry. I actually laughed. It’s so surreal and crazy and unbelievable that my mom has a brain tumor – and now I have one too?” she sighed.
She quickly scheduled an appointment with her mother’s doctor, neurosurgeon Dr. Keith L. Black, and together they booked in surgery for 8 June (17), Maria’s birthday. While the expert insisted he was “98 per cent sure it’s benign”, he couldn’t know for sure until undertaking the procedure, which took around seven hours to complete and removed 99.9 per cent of the growth.
“He said there’s a six to seven per cent chance that we’ll see it come back,” the presenter recalled. “But I’ll take those odds any day.”
As she’s still on the road to recovery Maria is relying on her fiance Keven Undergaro for support, both mentally and physically, noting, “I don’t have my balance fully yet but as long as I’m holding on to Keven, I’m sturdy and fine. My face is still numb. This is something that takes at least a month of healing, but I’m getting stronger and stronger every day and I’ll be back to normal very soon.”
In the wake of her medical issues, Maria has announced that she is stepping down from E! News after joining the channel in 2014. In a statement, she thanked all those for supporting her over the years, including her co-host Jason Kennedy, E! Entertainment president Adam Stotsky and producer Frances Berwick.
