Maria Menounos Shares Her Pancreatic Cancer Journey with PanCAN

there was a flight that I was on and I had eaten a pharaoh salad and I was in so much pain I mean when I say I looked at the clock I had three more hours on the flight and I was tears were streaming down my face cuz I'm in such excruciating pain and I didn't know what to do and I said oh it must be the gluten and the Pharaoh so I said I'm never eating that again and then in November I had excruciating pain again like buckled over can't can't do anything and I went to the hospital they scanned my abdomen with a CT scan report came back everything was unremarkable so next to each organ they write unremarkable pancreas unremarkable spleen unremarkable so I went back to life I started feeling so much better and then of course November was the CT scan where they didn't see it at that time it was there it was 2 cm they missed it CT scans don't catch the things as easily as an MRI would and then by January I was at peruo doing the outside facility MRI where they found the uh the tumor and so from there now I know I have a tumor on my pancreas and it's 100% confirmed and so the next morning my husband and I just woke up in the fetal position just balling because I knew I had a baby on the way and so I went to see Dr Tim Donahue at UCLA and he you know performed surgery February 16th he removed the tail of my pancreas my spleen 17 lymph nodes at the same time I also had a massive fibroid that was growing rapidly and so they had to take that out so it was a almost I think it was 10hour Operation where they just took everything out and pathology came back cancer hadn't spread to any of the lymph nodes thank God and that's when I knew I was safe I think early detection for pancreatic cancer is I mean an essential it's a no-brainer because it takes so many lives Because by the time people find out they have it it's so Advanced I wanted to partner with pan cant because I want to help spread awareness and to help people understand that early protection paying attention to your body and the signals it's giving you not numbing them not band-aiding them really paying attention and going to the doctors and just you have to keep beating down those doors until you get the scans you need we don't know the end of the story but why are we going to try to predict it either there's nothing powerful that comes from that there are people with pancreas cancer that have are living now with 10 years with adoc carcinoma that's why I'm here is so that people know that people know that people who have stage 4 pancreas cancer are still living 10 years in and even more we need to know that so we have [Music] hope

Channel: Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

Views: 3,907

Keywords: pancreatic cancer

Id: PqunlzY_i8U

Length: 3min 16sec (196 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2023