Maria Menounos revealed to People magazine that she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January 2023 — and that she was only able to catch it early because she advocated for herself.
The 44-year-old TV personality, who’s currently expecting her first child via surrogate with husband Keven Undergaro, said she started experiencing “excruciating abdominal pain coupled with diarrhea” in November 2022. The symptoms showed up just months after she was newly diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which runs in her family.
Menounos underwent a CT scan and extensive testing for her gastrointestinal issues, but they found nothing, People reported.
“They said, ‘Everything’s fine.’ But I kept having pains,” the mom-to-be told the outlet. By several weeks later, her pain had become so severe that she felt like “someone was tearing my insides out.”
So, she decided to get a full-body MRI, which revealed that she had a 3.9-centimeter mass on her pancreas. A biopsy later confirmed it was a stage 2 neuroendocrine tumor.
Because she was able to catch it early, she had a good prognosis. “I need people to know there are places they can go to catch things early,” she told People. “You can’t let fear get in the way. I had that moment where I thought I was a goner — but I’m OK because I caught this early enough.”
In February, Menounos underwent surgery to remove the tumor, and the recovery was “super painful,” she said. But she doesn’t need any additional treatment, just annual scans for the next five years.
First pancreatic cancer symptoms
Menounos’ prognosis is unusual for pancreatic cancer, which has the lowest five-year survival rate of all major cancers, according to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
The primary reason is the cancer doesn’t usually cause symptoms and therefore isn’t detected until it has spread outside the pancreas, making it more difficult to treat. Pancreatic cancer also doesn’t show up in most medical imaging, as was the case with Menounos. And because the pancreas sits so deep inside the abdomen, patients aren’t able to feel it, as they might with breast cancer, for example.
What’s more, the early symptoms of pancreatic cancer can be vague and attributed to other conditions. So that’s why experts in treating it recommend knowing the early signs and advocating for yourself if you experience any of them, especially for more than a few weeks.
Many pancreatic cancer patients say their first symptoms were stomach or back pain, which may come and go initially, or get worse after meals or when lying down, according to Cleveland Clinic.
Other common early pancreatic cancer symptoms, according to Dr. Suneel Kamath, pancreatic oncologist at Cleveland Clinic, include: fatigue; sudden, rapid weight loss; and pain in the middle of the stomach under the breast bone. But not everyone gets these.
“What happens a lot of times is people either think it’s just acid reflux, that they ate something funny or they ascribe it to some other thing for a while,” Kamath previously told TODAY.com. “They’ll see their doctors and many of them will be started on acid reflux medicines or other things targeting general stomach issues.”
“That’s why I emphasize anything that goes on for … five, six weeks at a time isn’t going to be your garden variety reflux, indigestion, constipation-related stuff,” he continues, adding that because pancreatic cancer is still pretty rare, most doctors won’t assume these symptoms could be a sign of it.
Alex Trebek, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2020 after being diagnosed less than two years before, shared in a 2019 PSA that one of his first symptoms was “persistent stomach pain.” Patrick Swayze, who died in 2009, had jaundice as one of his first pancreatic cancer symptoms, which is common, per the American Cancer Society.
“He came to me and he said, ‘Do my eyes look yellow?’” his widow, Lisa Niemi Swayze, recently told TODAY.com. “He had some digestive problems — pain that wouldn’t go away. But it was mostly the yellow eyes that sent us to the doctor. He said, ‘Oh, we’ll go in next week.’ But I thought, ‘Yellow eyes just doesn’t sound normal. We need to go tomorrow.’”
Pancreatic cancer survival
About 44% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer before it has spread to other parts of the body will survive more than five years, according to the American Cancer Society. If it’s spread to parts of the body nearby, then the five-year survival rate is 15%. If it’s spread far, then it’s 3%.
Menounos told People she’s grateful for the outcome of her pancreatic cancer journey, especially because she’ll be welcoming a daughter in the near future.
“I’m so grateful and so lucky,” she said. “God granted me a miracle. “I’m going to appreciate having her in my life so much more than I would have before this journey.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
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