Maria Menounos

Maria helped her mother who had stage four brain cancer. It was discovered that she was suffering from an extremely serious health condition. In February 2014 Menounos started experiencing troubling symptoms. "I'd been getting lightheaded on set and having headaches" the actress tells PEOPLE in the magazine's exclusive new cover story. My speech was getting slow and was also having difficult getting the teleprompter to understand. Menounos discovered she had a massive meningioma brain tumor. An MRI confirmed this. Menounos made an appointment to visit her neurosurgeon mother, Dr. Keith L. Black. Surgery was scheduled to take place on June 8, Menounos 39th birthday. "He stated, 'I'm 98 percent sure it's a benign tumor, however we'll never know until we get in there the surgery,'" she says. The complicated procedure took around seven hours. the doctor. Black was capable of getting rid of 99.9% of the benign cancer. She says that Dr. Black told her that it's possible for the tumor to return in between six and seven percent of cases. "But I'll take those odds any day." Menounos is admitted to the hospital for six days, is currently at home and spending moment recuperating.