Maria Menounos has spoken about how doctors missed her tumor before she was diagnosed with stage-two pancreatic cancer while she was preparing to welcome her first child.
The media personality, 45, told Dear Media’s Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast that the tumor doubled in size in the two months since her first scan in November.
Following that scan, she then underwent a full-body MRI, which eventually led to her diagnosis in January.
‘When they found the tumor in the MRI, they said, “Can we go back and get the records and look at the November scan? I bet it was there,”‘ Menounos said.
Maria Menounos has spoken about how doctors missed her tumor before she was diagnosed with stage-two pancreatic cancer
‘And it was. At that point it was two centimeters (0.79 inches) and by the time they had found it was almost four centimeters (1.5 inches), it had doubled in size in two months.’
The former E! News and Extra presenter explained that she was ‘still getting to the bottom’ of how the tumor was missed.
‘What I’ve learned since is… different scans have the ability to see different things better,’ she said.
‘For this, an MRI was what’s really going to see it, for other things CAT scans are better, for others things an ultrasound’s better. It’s a really complicated process….’
Menounos added: ‘So the radiologist went back and he was able to see it and do an addendum and say, “Yes, now with the knowledge it was there, we’re able to see it is there.”‘
Leading up to her diagnosis, the 45-year-old, who is expecting her first child via surrogate with husband Keven Undergaro this summer, said she had chronic abdominal pain.
‘I had severe diarrhea for a month and a half. I did all the stool tests, they came back negative, nothing was bad. I went and got a CAT scan, they said, “You’re fine,”‘ Menounos said.
‘But my pain kept persisting, and any time I complained about the pain, my doctor was like, “We’ve done all the tests.”‘
The former E! News and Extra presenter also opened up that she had ‘severe’ diarrhea for a month and a half
Menounos and her husband, Keven Undergaro, are expecting their first child together this summer. The couple pictured in 2018
Earlier this year, Menounos revealed more details about her cancer battle.
After her doctors confirmed that the mass was a cause for concern, Menounos recalled she hadn’t really had a chance to process the news until the following day.
‘I remember waking up the next morning and I hadn’t really cried, but I just started guttural crying because I’m like: “How could God finally bless me with a baby after 10 years, and now I’m not going to get to meet her?”‘ she told Today in an emotional interview back in May.
‘And so Keven’s devastated, I’m devastated, we can’t tell anybody. I can’t tell my dad, how much more can that man take?’
Menounos added: ‘The more I thought about it, I was like, this doesn’t make sense, this doesn’t make sense. And then I realized, it doesn’t make sense, and that’s when I shifted and said, “I don’t know anything, so why am I going to predict the worst? Why am I going to be thinking the worst?”‘
Luckily, her cancer was caught early enough to keep her from undergoing further treatment such as chemotherapy or radiation.
Undergaro helped Menounos get through another major health battle in 2017 after doctors discovered a benign brain tumor that was later removed (pictured in hospital)
She previously told PEOPLE that the health scare made her fall into despair and she initially feared she wouldn’t live long enough to meet her baby daughter.
‘When you are met with a [potential] death sentence everything changes,’ Menounos explained.
Undergaro helped the Heal Squad podcast host get through another major health battle in 2017 after doctors discovered a benign brain tumor that was later removed.
But this go around, she admitted that both of them were ‘really scared’ about the outcome while they were just months away from welcoming a baby girl.
Menounos’s own mother Litsa battled stage-four brain cancer in 2016 before she died in May 2021 aged 66.
