Maria Menounos has been through more medical plot twists than most hospital dramas, and she keeps coming back with receipts and resolve. Brain tumor. Rare pancreatic cancer. Now pernicious anemia. Through all of it, the TV host and Dancing With the Stars alum has stayed blunt about what happened, how long it took to get answers, and why she trusts her gut even when doctors don’t.
The quick version
- 2017: Diagnosed with a slow-growing, benign brain tumor; had surgery and stepped down as E! News co-anchor.
- 2017: Her mom, Litsa, was fighting stage 4 brain cancer at the same time.
- May 2021: Litsa died at 66 after her long battle with brain cancer.
- 2023: After a decade of fertility struggles, Maria and husband Keven Undergaro welcomed daughter Athena Alexandra via surrogate.
- Late 2023: Maria revealed she had a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (a rare type of pancreatic cancer) and recovered after treatment.
- March 2026: She shared that she is being treated for pernicious anemia and is working to dial in B12 therapy.
2017: The brain tumor she basically diagnosed herself
Maria initially thought she had an ear infection. A doctor told her the ears were pristine and asked what else was going on. The list was not great: on-set lightheadedness, headaches, slurred speech, and trouble reading the teleprompter. She said out loud what most people would not: she worried it might be a brain tumor, like her mom’s. An MRI kept getting pushed, then confirmed her instinct — a slow-growing, benign tumor. Surgery followed.
She stepped down from cohosting E! News to focus on recovery, thanking her on-air partner Jason Kennedy and the E! team by name, including execs Frances Berwick and Adam Stotsky, for backing her through a brutal stretch. Years later, on Hoda Kotb’s podcast Making Space in 2023, she didn’t mince words about how she got there in the first place:
I diagnosed myself.
Becoming a mom after a long, messy fertility road
Maria and Keven Undergaro spent roughly a decade trying to build their family — multiple approaches, a surrogate they adored, the works — only to be told by their fertility doctor at one point that it was never going to happen. By 2021, she told Today it was getting hard not to read meaning into the setbacks. They kept at it anyway. In 2023, they welcomed their daughter, Athena Alexandra, via surrogate. Maria later called the moment their doctor placed Athena on her chest pure joy — the payoff after years of no, not yet, and try again.
Then, a rare pancreatic cancer
Not long after becoming a mom, Maria started pushing doctors about severe abdominal issues. She says it took more than a year to convince anyone something was truly off — at one point she joked she looked like she had swallowed a basketball for a year and a half. An endoscopy and a colonoscopy showed nothing. She still didn’t drop it. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and a full-body scan finally spotted a mass on her pancreas: a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which is a rare type of pancreatic cancer.
On Making Space in November 2023, she said the quiet part out loud about being your own advocate:
I have learned that we have to be the CEO of our health. We have to use our own internal guidance. We have to do our own homework. We have to push if the pain persists. You can’t just listen to somebody else tell you what’s happening in your body.
She even remembered saying on her own podcast months earlier that she thought something was wrong with her pancreas — a viewer later reminded her of the clip. She underwent treatment and made a full recovery.
Her mom’s battle — and loss
While Maria was navigating her own tumor in 2017, her mom, Litsa, was already deep into a fight with stage 4 brain cancer. Litsa died in May 2021 at 66. It’s heartbreaking context for why Maria’s instincts were so laser-focused from the start.
2026: Pernicious anemia enters the chat
In March 2026, Maria shared that she was dealing with pernicious anemia, which essentially means your body isn’t making enough healthy red blood cells. The fallout can look like constant fatigue, shortness of breath, and dizziness. Her takeaway this time landed like a note you stick on the bathroom mirror:
After everything I’ve been through on my healing journey... this has been one of the BIGGEST lessons: Sometimes it’s not about doing more, it’s about giving your body something different.
That same month, she told Jenny McCarthy on McCarthy’s podcast that she’s on B12 treatment for the anemia and that her deficiency level is sky-high at the moment. McCarthy suggested she consider switching to a methylated B12 — basically a form that’s more readily used by the body’s tissues — as she fine-tunes the plan.
Where she is now
Between a brain tumor, a rare pancreatic cancer, the loss of her mom, and a years-long fertility gauntlet, Maria keeps doing the thing: asking more questions, trying different paths, and not accepting a shrug for an answer. Twice she’s made a full recovery after life-altering diagnoses. Now she’s tackling pernicious anemia with the same mix of curiosity and stubbornness that, frankly, keeps saving her life.