Maria Menounos revealed the strange symptom that led her to the diagnosis of one of the deadliest forms of cancer.

The 45-year-old presenter suffered excruciating pain that felt like she was going to ‘explode inside’ after eating farro salad on a flight. Farro for the Italians, zea for us Greeks, is one of the most ancient cereals, whose cultivation has also been mentioned by Homer.

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Doctors initially dismissed the symptoms of bloating, but after going to a second hospital for a scintigraphy, he was diagnosed with stage two pancreatic cancer.

Menounos, who at the time was expecting her daughter Athena to be born via surrogate, underwent surgery to remove the tumor.

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Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer in America, with only one in ten patients surviving more than a year after diagnosis.

Maria Menounos, who has 1.1 million followers on Instagram, said today that her case highlights the need to “listen” to the symptoms in our bodies, even when doctors dismiss them.

She told TODAY that after eating the salad she suffered “that kind of pain where you feel like you’re going to explode inside.”

“I thought it was the farro. I thought I must be gluten intolerant“, she said herself. Menounos went to her doctor for an endoscopy and colonoscopy after developing stomach pain in 2022, but nothing unusual came up. He also did a CT scan, which also didn’t show anything. But her symptoms persisted, with the presenter suffering from diarrhea and in November 2022 again bent over in pain. That led to her going to hospital in January for an MRI, which revealed the tumor in her pancreas.

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