Praying for a Miracle
- Better Together Host Maria Menounos is refocusing her energy as she helps her mother fight through advanced stage brain cancer.
- The former E! News anchor just returned to Los Angeles from a New York appearance on Live with Kelly and Ryan, and posted about the small miracles that she has witnessed this week with her mother’s condition.
- A terminal brain cancer survivor tells SurvivorNet about the power of determination as doctors call her a living miracle.
Menounos has been keeping her followers updated with her mother’s battle, which health professionals have stated is on the “decline.” But Menounos is reminding herself how powerful the mind is when it comes to healing because with her latest shift in mental energy, her mom has made progress this week.
Read MoreHowever, on the trip to New York from Los Angeles, her focus changed, and she was re-inspired.
“The closer I got to NYC, the more my energy shifted. I realized I needed to get myself into a better state. I needed to get back to ‘miracle mode,'” she wrote. “That energy, coupled with the priest’s visit, was contagious for my mom in the best way. She was engaging in back and forth discussion, eyes open and alert. It was the first time we experienced that in the last week and proved to me, yet again, how powerful mindset & energy is.”
Maria, who is married to writer/producer Kevin Undergaro, 53, said that she got even more energy back from her mother feeling that energized and realized she was “looking at things the wrong way.”
She addressed how many miracles her family has witnessed with her dad’s diabetes, her mother’s health and both of them surviving COVID-19. “Every time the tumor grew we believed it was the end only to be wrong,” she said. “A great key was us shifting our mindsets per the training I got through all the experts on my show.”
The former E! host is still praying for her mom’s ultimate miracle to come where she gets through this. “I want to be dancing in Greece with her this summer.”
She asked what the risk is in believing. “I told my husband if i believed that Tom Brady could come back from a 28-3 deficit in the Super Bowl…I better believe that much more in God. So that’s what I'm doing and what you can do in your situations too,” she wrote. “I'm grateful I got to come home where my mom told me I did a good job. And thank you to everyone at @livekellyandryan for always supporting me and thanks to my @bettertogetherwithmaria #healsquad for being with me through all of this.”
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Maria’s Own Brain Tumor Discovery
Litsa was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, one of the most commonand most aggressivebrain tumors in 2016 when she was 61 years old. While Menounos was taking care of her mother, she started having strange symptoms like ear pain, dizziness, and blurred vision. She told her mother’s doctor, thinking she was crazy that she was having similar issues. After an MRI, they discovered a golf ball-sized (non-cancerous) benign tumor.
“When they gave me the official diagnosis, I actually started laughing,” Maria said in an interview. “I was just like, I can’t believe this could possibly be happening again in my household.”
Menounos underwent a 7-hour brain surgery on her 39th birthday in June 2017. After her scary experience coupled with her mother’s diagnosis, Menounos decided to get more serious about her health. Menounos, who did not even tell her parents until three days before her surgery to avoid causing them more stress, took some time off of work and came forward with her story.
“Because of everything I had been through with my mom, as soon as I knew that this was benign, I felt like I could get through anything,” she said.
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A Brain Cancer Fighter’s Story
A brain cancer survivor shared a similar “miracle” story of determination as she fights terminal brain cancer with an inoperable tumor.
“The negative that’s happening is that I have terminal brain cancer,” said 36-year-old survivor Natalie Wells to SurvivorNet. “But the positive is I’m still here. It was very hard for me in the beginning. I was scared, because they used the word ‘terminal,’ and they give you a time frame.
Wells had entered hospice, like Menounos’ mom, and she had to prepare a will and get everything in order for her husband and children. “That was very hard for me to accept the fact that I had to put my affairs in order, because in my head, I wasn’t going anywhere. And I had told them, I’m not going anywhere. And that was in the beginning, that I will do whatever it takes to fight. It’s my children.”
Her motto is “live life to the fullest.”
“You live it like it’s your last,” she said. “Whatever I have to do– hydrochemo, clinical trials– whatever it is, just give it to me. And I’m still here, because obviously, it’s all been working. And that’s why my doctors have labeled me ‘the miracle.’ I’m not planning on going anywhere.
“It’s fighting. That’s all that it is. So all that negative, this right here is the positive, is that I’m still here.”
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