Maria Menounos has stepped down from E! News after she was found to have a brain tumour.
The 39-year-old presenter – whose mother has been battling stage 4 brain cancer – realised there was something wrong in February, when she began getting headaches and experienced trouble with her vision and speech.
She said: "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 tumour like my mom.’ He said, ‘I don’t think you’re crazy. Let’s just get an MRI.’ "
But Maria wasn’t diagnosed until April because she began feeling better, so kept putting off the scans as she thought she was paranoid.
However, after a benign tumour the size of a golf ball was discovered to be pressing on her nerves, the former ‘Fashion Police’ presenter underwent a seven-hour operation to have it removed earlier this month, though there is always a chance it could return in the future.
She told People magazine: "It looks like [the surgeon] got 99.9 percent of it.
"He said there’s a six to seven per cent chance that we’ll see it come back. But I’ll take those odds any day.
The former wrestler is now back at home and slowly getting back to health with the support of her fiance Keven Undergaro.
She said: "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."
Maria Menounos takes time off after brain tumour scare
