Maria Menounos

While caring for her mother, suffering from stage 4 brain cancer Maria found out she was facing an illness in her own. In February 2014 Menounos started experiencing troubling symptoms. In the exclusive cover story of PEOPLE Menounos admits that she had been experiencing headaches and lightheadedness on sets. My speech was becoming slurred, and I had difficulty getting the teleprompter to understand. A MRI discovered that Menounos suffered from a large golf ball-sized meningioma brain tumor pushing on her facial nerves. Menounos had an arrangement made to see Dr. Keith L. Black her mother's neurosurgeon , and scheduled surgery for June 8. Menounos is now 39 years old. "He advised me, 'I'm 99 percent sure it's benign but it will be determined once you're inside at the time of surgery,'" she says. Dr. Black managed to eliminate 99.9 percent of benign tumors in a complex operation that took seven hours. "He said there's between six and seven percent possibility that it will be back again," she says. The odds of this are my top option. Menounos is admitted to hospital for six days, is currently at home and is spending her recuperating.