Maria Menounos

Maria realized she was suffering from medical issues of her own while she cared for her mother who was suffering from stages 4 brain tumors. In February 2014 Menounos started experiencing troubling symptoms. "I'd experienced lightheadedness while on set, and was suffering from migraines" she tells PEOPLE in the magazine's new exclusive feature. "My speech had gotten slurred and I was having trouble using the Teleprompter". The results of an MRI showed that Menounos had a golf-ball-size meningioma brain tumor that was pushing into her facial nerves. Menounos booked an appointment with her mother's doctor, the renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Keith L. Black who scheduled the surgery on June 8, her 39th birthday. "He advised me, 'I'm 99 percent sure that it's benign, but we won't know until we're in the hospital the surgery,'" she says. In the arduous surgery that took about seven hours, Dr. Black was able to eliminate 99.9 per cent of the cancer, which proved to be benign. "He advised that there's about an eight to seven percent likelihood that we'll have it occur again," she says. "But I'll take that chance any day." Menounos, who was admitted to hospital for six days, is currently at home at home and has been spending moment recuperating.