E! News co-anchor Maria Menounos has been by her mother's side as she battles stage 4 brain cancer. Then she got some unbelievable news. Doctors discovered Maria had a brain tumor, too. But the TV star knows bad news doesn't mean God isn't at work. And she's calling the whole situation a blessing!
Maria Menounos has watched her mom bravely fight stage four brain cancer. And when the TV star started experiencing dizziness, headaches and slurred speech, she just knew she was facing something similar.
“I said, ‘I know you’re going to think I'm crazy but I feel like I have a brain tumor like my mom,’” she recalled telling the doctor.
Brain Tumor Confirmed
Tests confirmed Maria was not crazy. Doctors found a golf ball-sized tumor in her brain.
"I didn't cry. I actually laughed," she says of her reaction to the news. "It's so surreal and crazy and unbelievable that my mom has a brain tumor — and now I have one too?"
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Maria turned to the same doctor treating her mom for help, a renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Keith L. Black. Dr. Black performed a 7-hour surgery on Maria's 39th birthday, removing 99.9 percent of the tumor, which was benign.
"He said there’s a six to seven percent chance that we’ll see it come back,” Maria Menounos says. “But I’ll take those odds any day.”
Maria still has trouble with balance, as well as some numbness in her face, but she's getting stronger each day. And while her mother's prognosis is nowhere near as good, Maria sees the sliver lining in all of this.
“I knew from the very beginning that this was a blessing and this was a gift. I even knew it with my mom because it brought our whole family together,” she said. “I think that there have been a lot of beautiful things that have come even just from my mom’s illness."
Focusing On God's Faithfulness
It's not been easy. But the experience, including Maria's own health scare, is proof God can use even the worst things for good.
“For me, I saw it as a huge blessing and a huge gift because I needed to change my life,” she said, shedding tears. “I've said it before, we're caretakers as women and we help everybody and we put ourselves last always. And I don't think that we — at least for me — I guess I realized I didn’t value myself in a lot of ways. And so I think that was a really important lesson.”
Maria is stepping down as co-anchor of E’s news program. Undoubtedly, she will spend time continuing to care for her mom, in addition to her own healing.
The support she's received through the entire ordeal is yet another blessing Maria Menounos appreciates greatly. She wrote an emotional post on Instagram where she thanked God and all her well wishers, as well as asked everyone to keep praying for her mom.
Believing in God does not guarantee an easy, worry-free life. But it does assure us we'll never be alone. And God will always find a way to bring beauty out of the brokenness!
h/t: GodUpdates
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