Maria Menounos has spoken about how doctors missed her tumor before she was diagnosed with stage two pancreatic cancer as she prepared to welcome her first child.
The media personality, 45, told Dear media, not skinny but not fat podcast that the tumor doubled in size in the two months since her first scan in November.
After that scan, she then underwent a full-body MRI, which ultimately led to her diagnosis in January.
“When they found the tumor in the MRI, they said, ‘Can we go back and get the data 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 time it was two centimeters (0.79 inches) and by the time they found it it was almost four centimeters (1.5 inches), it had doubled in two months.”
The former E! News and Extra presenter explained that she was ‘still figuring out’ how the tumor was missed.
“What I’ve learned since then is that different scans can see different things better,” she said.
“Before this, an MRI was what was really going to see, for other things CAT scans are better, for other things an ultrasound is better. It’s a very complicated process…”
Menounos added: “So the radiologist went back and he could see it and make an addendum and say, ‘Yeah, now that we know it was there, we can see it’s there.'”
Leading up to her diagnosis, the 45-year-old, who is expecting her first child this summer via surrogate with husband Keven Undergaro, 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 to get a CAT scan, they said, ‘You’re fine,'” Menounos said.
“But my pain persisted, and every time I complained about the pain, my doctor would say, ‘We’ve done all the tests.'”
The former E! News and Extra presenter also said that she had had ‘serious’ 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 battle with cancer.
After her doctors confirmed that the mass was a cause for concern, Menounos recalled that she hadn’t really had a chance to process the news until the next day.
“I remember waking up the next morning and I hadn’t really cried, but I just started crying because I thought, ‘How could God finally bless me with a baby after 10 years, and now I’m not going to meet her? she told Today in an emotional interview in May.
And so Keven is devastated, I’m devastated, we can’t tell anyone. I can’t tell my father, how much more can that man take?’
Menounos added: “The more I thought about it, I thought, this makes no sense, this makes no sense. And then I realized it doesn’t make any sense, and then I shifted and said, “I don’t know anything, so why am I predicting the worst? Why am I thinking the worst?”‘
Fortunately, her cancer was caught early enough to prevent her from undergoing further treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation.
Undergaro helped Menounos endure another major health battle in 2017 after doctors discovered a benign brain tumor that was later removed (pictured at the hospital)
She told earlier PEOPLE that the health scare drove her to despair and that she initially feared she wouldn’t live long enough to meet her infant daughter.
“If you are met with a [potential] death sentence, everything changes,” Menounos explained.
Undergaro helped the Heal Squad podcast host endure another major health battle in 2017 after doctors discovered a benign brain tumor that was later removed.
But going around, she admitted that they were both “really scared” of the outcome while they were just months away from welcoming a baby girl.
Menounos’ own mother Litsa battled stage four brain cancer in 2016 before passing away in May 2021 at the age of 66.