Like so many who go through major health issues, Maria Menounos‘ battle with pancreatic cancer left her a changed woman. “It’s really made me more patient with everything in life,” the former E! News host tells SheKnows. “My number one focus is my health so I can be here for her.”
“Her” is Menounos’ two-year-old daughter Athena, who was born via surrogate just months after Menounos underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer. The first symptoms — painful digestive issues and new-onset Type 1 diabetes — went unTV host had been experiencing painful digestive issues without an answer, and had to push for an MRI before finally receiving a diagnosis of Stage 2 pancreatic cancer. Surgeons removed the tail of her pancreas, her spleen, 17 lymph nodes, and a large uterine fibroid in 2023.
Now cancer-free, Menounos is dedicating her life to teaching others to advocate for themselves in healthcare. That includes little Athena, whom she shares with her husband of eight years, Kevin Undergaro. “I am teaching Athena to be the CEO of her health,” Menounos explains. “She’s grounding, she’s doing her fascia release stretches and her yoga poses. She’s in the yard playing in dirt and getting sunshine.” While Menounos hasn’t spoken with her daughter about her cancer journey specifically — she is only 2, after all — they’re focused on building a healthy foundation she can build her life on. “She’s learning to eat from the garden with my dad,” Menounos adds.
Menounos is also arming her daughter with knowledge, like her family medical history — you know, that part of the doctors’ intake form most of us blindly guess at. “I’ve been working on a family tree, so that she understands the health problems of our family,” Menounos explains. Because of language barriers — Menounos’ parents and family are from Greece — “Everyone’s like, ‘oh, we think that they had this kind of cancer.’ I’m like, ‘Well, it’d be really helpful to know.’”
Being CEO of your health also means staying on top of screenings, whether that’s a yearly mammogram or a test like Cancerguard, a new blood test that screens for over 50 cancer types and subtypes. Menounos, a spokesperson for Cancerguard, stresses that “we have to do these preventative screenings and we have to take our health into the highest of consideration.” For our loved ones, our children, and of course, ourselves — something Menounos knows women struggle with.
“As women, we do not prioritize ourselves. We prioritize everyone else, and then we’re coming apart at the seams and we’re wondering why,” she says. Menounos, the host of the Heal Squad podcast, encourages her friends, family, and listeners to “get help and take care of yourself.”
These days, on the other side of cancer, Menounos feels deep gratitude. “I don’t take a second for granted with Athena,” she says. “I’m grateful, because even all of these horrible things do have silver linings. I’ve learned how to be a really great advocate for myself and for others. I’ve learned a lot about the health system and health in general to be able to help my friends and family and the people that listen to my podcast… Every day is a magical gift.”
