Maria Menounos

As she was caring for her mother, suffering from stage 4 brain cancer, Maria realized she was facing a health crisis that was her own. In February 2014 Menounos started experiencing troubling symptoms. "I'd noticed that I was feeling lightheaded when I was on set and had migraines" Menounos tells PEOPLE in the magazine's exclusive new issue. My speech became blurred and I was having trouble comprehension of the teleprompter. An MRI revealed Menounos to have a very large meningioma brain tumour that increased to the size of a golf ball. It was pressing on her facial nerves. Menounos scheduled an appointment with her mom's physician, famous Neurosurgeon Dr. Keith L. Black who scheduled the surgery for June 8th, her 39th birthday. He said that it was 98 percent safe. However, we wouldn't know that when they've reached that point. The complex procedure, that took about seven hours, Dr. Black was able to remove 99.9 per cent of the cancer. This was benign. "He said there's an 8% to 7% possibility that it will be back again," she says. "But I'll go with those odds any day." Menounos she was admitted to hospital for 6 days, is back at home, and spending time healing.