Maria Menounos believes her brain tumour was "a gift".
The 39-year-old TV presenter – whose mother has been battling stage 4 brain cancer – was found to have a benign tumour the size of a golf ball, and after having it removed she is ready to change her life for the better.
She said: "I think that this was a gift, because I needed to change my life. I needed to change the way I did everything."
Maria – who had the tumour removed on June 8, her 39th birthday – admitted she "started kind of chuckling" when she was given her diagnosis because it was so surreal.
Explaining what the doctor said to her, she revealed: "He said, ‘I’m so sorry I have to tell you this because I know you’re going through a lot with your mom, but you have a brain tumour. It’s called a meningioma. You need to schedule an appointment with a neurosurgeon right away.’
"I started kind of chuckling. Because at this point it’s like, ‘This is a joke. Like, how does this happen?’ "
Maria wasn’t diagnosed until April because she began feeling better, so kept putting off the scans as she thought she was paranoid, but when she told the doctor out loud what was wrong with her she immediately compared herself to her mother.
In a preview of her interview on ‘Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly’ shown on Friday’s (21.07.17) ‘Today’ show, she added: "At that point, when I said all those things out loud to [the doctor], the symptoms mirrored what my mom had. And I realised it in that moment."
The former ‘Fashion Police’ presenter underwent a seven-hour operation to have her tumour removed, but there is a chance it could return in the future.
She recently said: "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."
Maria Menounos: My brain tumour was ‘a gift’
