Maria Menounos' Pancreatic Cancer Battle
- Maria Menounos, 45, revealed earlier this year that she battled stage 2 pancreatic cancer, which left her thinking she was a “goner” at the time of her diagnosis.
- Pancreatic cancer is known as the “silent” disease because symptoms rarely show up until it has advanced and metastasized (spread) to other parts of the body, when more aggressive treatment is needed.
- Luckily, because Menounos’ cancer was discovered while it was still in an early stage, she was able to get the tumor, her spleen, part of her pancreas, 17 lymph nodes and a large fibroid removed via surgery on Feb. 16 of this year.
- Additionally, her doctor and surgeon said she will not need to undergo chemotherapy or other forms of treatment.
Now, the soon-to-be mom is using all that she learned from her recent battle with the disease, following her 2017 brain tumor and her mom's passing from brain cancer, to encourage others to advocate for themselves and never give up.
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Menounos revealed what she thought right after she received her diagnosis, saying, “And so when he said there was a large mass on my pancreas, I started to well up and I looked at him and I was like, ‘So I’m a goner, right?'”
When asked by Hirsh if she actually said that to her doctor, Menounos explained, “Well yeah, I know what pancreas and tumor means.”
Pancreatic cancer is often called a "silent" disease because it usually takes a while before people experience symptoms. So when they do start recognizing symptoms, the disease has likely already progressed into an advanced stage.
Menounos followed up by saying that society doesn’t prioritize health: “Grow up and be something, get good grades, go to a great college, get a big job, make a lot of money, get married, have kids … Health?”
After saying “health,” the mom-to-be jokingly looked up and around suggesting health is often overlooked in the lives of busy people.
In regard to how stress affected her in the past and her now learning to cope better, she added, “I’ve made incredible strides, and I’m still working on everything. But that Mack Truck, it’s hard to slow it down when it’s already coming.
“So I keep telling people, ‘Your health is an accumulation of health habits and choices.’ So you have to really start young. And the hard thing is that when you’re so young you take it for granted, so you work long hours… eat s–t, treat our bodies like s–t, we don’t get the sleep that we need.”
Menounos revealed she started a meditation program to deal with life’s stressors.
Maria Menounos’ Pancreatic Cancer Battle
Before receiving her pancreatic cancer diagnosis, Menounos started suffering from major leg cramps in June 2022, a symptom which led her to the hospital, where she discovered she had type 1 diabetes (her dad and younger brother also have diabetes), she exclusively told PEOPLE.
Following her diabetes diagnosis, she was prescribed insulin, changed her diet, and felt “so good” by October.
In November 2022, she returned to the hospital “with excruciating abdominal pain” and “diarrhea.” Doctors told her everything was “fine” with her body. However, weeks later, she began feeling as if “someone was tearing my insides out.”
A whole-body MRI and a biopsy revealed she had a stage 2 pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor.
Recalling the shock she felt while receiving her diagnosis, Menounos said she had her husband and father by her side amid this cancer fight.
"I'm like 'How in the freaking world can I have a brain tumor and pancreatic cancer?' All I could think was that I have a baby coming," Menounos said.
Luckily, because Menounos' cancer was discovered while it was still in an early stage, she was able to get the tumor, her spleen, part of her pancreas, 17 lymph nodes and a large fibroid removed via surgery on Feb. 16 of this year.
Additionally, her doctor and surgeon said she will not need to undergo chemotherapy or other forms of treatment.
Menounos, who needs to get yearly scans for the next five years, is now incredibly "grateful" for being able to overcome cancer, adding, "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."
Why Is Early Detection of Pancreatic Cancer So Important?
Pancreatic cancer, like what Maria Menounos had, is known as the “silent” disease because it often isn’t detected until it has progressed to advanced stages and spread to other parts of the body, when more aggressive treatment is needed.
Additionally, the Cleveland Clinic explains that early-stage pancreatic cancer tumors typically don't appear on imaging scans. And there are no recommended screening routines for this type of cancer.
When pancreatic cancer is diagnosed in later stages, which it most often is, it becomes more difficult to treat.
“Because the pancreas is inside the abdomen, it often doesn't have symptoms that would tell you that something is wrong with your pancreas,” Dr. Anirban Maitra, co-leader of Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, previously told SurvivorNet.
“By the time individuals walk into the clinic with symptoms like jaundice, weight loss, back pain, or diabetes, it's often very late in the stage of the disease,” he explained.
Pancreatic Cancer: The Importance of Early Detection
So, it appears Maria Menounos was, indeed, lucky to have caught her cancer at stage 2.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 64,050 people (33,130 men and 30,920 women) will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2023. Unfortunately, about 50,550 people (26,620 men and 23,930 women) are estimated to die of the disease this year.
Dr. Maitra pointed out that a large issue lies in screening methods.
“It is not prudent to be screening everyone,” he said, citing a high rate of false positives. “So instead, our efforts are now focused on screening only those subsets of individuals who are at higher risk for pancreatic cancer.”
Dr. Matira also pointed out that those at higher risk would be anyone who has two or more family members who had pancreatic cancer, those with an abnormality in germline DNA, and those with cysts in their pancreas.
Detecting pancreatic cancer early on allows for more treatment options, as in Menounos’ case, where surgery was an option. Dr. Maitra noted that only approximately 20% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are eligible for surgery.
Despite the great advances in advanced pancreatic cancer treatment, early detection remains crucial.
If you're at high risk, and you suspect something might be wrong, there are tests that can be performed to see whether you might have pancreatic cancer.
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An endoscopic ultrasound or an MRI scan are two common ways of doing this, and doctors have been known to find early and treatable pancreatic cancers using both of these tests.
Studies have been done on a blood test for pancreatic cancer, and although this looks very promising, more tests are needed. And currently, an ultrasound and MRI are still the best widely available tests that are offered.
Meanwhile, one of the main reasons pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat is because of the stroma a barrier around cancer cells that prevents medications, such as chemotherapy and radiation, from targeting and killing these cells.
If these cells continue to grow, then the disease will continue to progress.
Dr. Allyson Ocean, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet, “Think of pancreatic cancer as an oatmeal raisin cookie and the raisins are actually the cancer cells, and the cookie part is actually all the stroma around it.”
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“And imagine having to navigate through all that stroma for a treatment to be able to get into a cell to kill it. So that's why the treatments just really aren't good enough to penetrate the cancer. But we're improving, we're getting better treatments,” Ocean explained.
Pancreatic Cancer Symptoms
Dr. Syed Ahmad, of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, dubs pancreatic cancer “a silent cancer, and that's why it's a bad cancer,” he said in a recent interview with WLWT-TV.
"Unfortunately, pancreas cancer does not get diagnosed until later stages because it remains asymptomatic until it gets to the later stages," he added.
If people do experience symptoms, they may include unintentional weight loss, stomach pain, and jaundice, or yellowing of the skin. People may also experience fatigue, loss of appetite, or light-colored stool.
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Dr. Diane Simeone, Director of the Pancreatic Cancer Center at NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center, previously told SurvivorNet that she strongly supports research focused on early detection.
“Because pancreatic cancer is often undetectable and asymptomatic until it is at an advanced stage, I continue to strongly advocate for germline testing and early detection programs, especially for those most at risk for pancreatic cancer, such as individuals with a family history of the disease,” Dr. Simeone said.
“Research to develop an early detection blood test is underway and could have an incredible impact on patient outcomes.”
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Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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