Photo: karabatsispavlos / BACKGRID
Maria Menounoswill be lacing up her running shoes in November.
The formerE! Newscorrespondent traveled to Greece, where she registered for the 40th Authentic Athens Marathon later this year. She also obtained Greek citizenship and is now a dual citizen of Greece and the United States.
Her goal to finish a marathon in her family’s country of origin comes after Menounos, 44,told PEOPLE earlier this yearthat she had been privately battling stage 2 pancreatic cancer. Diagnosed in January, she underwent a successful surgery to remove a 3.9-cm. tumor and is now on a mission to encourage others to seek answers to their health problems.
Amanda Friedman
While staying healthy has always been a priority for Menounos, she has faced other health battles in the past, having been diagnosed and treated for a benignbrain tumor in 2017and then learning she had diabetes.
“I was feeling so good, and then I got slapped in the face with a new diagnosis,” Menounos told PEOPLE at the time. A trip to the hospital revealed she had type 1 diabetes, which runs in her family. She was prescribed insulin, went on a strict diet, began monitoring her glucose levels and dramatically improved.
By October, “I was crushing it,” saysMenounos, who still takes insulin daily and wears a glucose monitor, “I felt so good. What else could go wrong?” But a month later she was back in the hospital, this time “with excruciating abdominal pain coupled with diarrhea.”
When the pain continued, she did a whole-body MRI which revealed the mass on her pancreas, with a subsequent biopsy confirming that it was a Stage 2 pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, a form of cancer.
Given the early stage at which she caught it, Menounos was given a good prognosis and on Feb. 16 she underwent surgery to remove the tumor along with part of her pancreas, her spleen, a large fibroid and 17 lymph nodes. “It was super painful,” she says of the medical ordeal and her recuperation. “I couldn’t move or lift myself up.”
Months later, she has healed and only needs to undergo scans once every 5 years. “I’m so grateful and so lucky,” she said.
source: people.com
