Maria Menounos reveals pancreatic cancer battle—while expecting her first baby

If you’re familiar with TV personality Maria Menounos at all, you’re likely familiar with the health scares and battles she’s faced in recent years. Unfortunately, she faced another health scare earlier this year—a big one. The mom-to-be revealed to PEOPLE that she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January.

After spending the last three months healing from life-saving surgery, Menounos is ready to talk about her diagnosis. After learning she had stage 2 pancreatic cancer, Menounos underwent a successful surgery to remove a 3.9-cm. tumor. She says she’s now made it her mission to encourage others to seek answers to their health problems and listen to their bodies.

“I need people to know there are places they can go to catch things early,” she says. “You can’t let fear get in the way. I had that moment where I thought I was a goner—but I’m okay because I caught this early enough.”

Related: Maria Menounos is expecting her first baby after 10+ years of trying

Back in 2017, Menounos was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor while her mother was battling grade 4 brain cancer. Last year, she began feeling ill and was subsequently diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic—a disease that runs in her family. She had recently learned at the time that the surrogate she and her husband, Keven Undergaro, enlisted was officially pregnant with the couple’s first child. So the diabetes diagnosis was an unwelcome setback, but one she was facing head-on.

“I was feeling so good, and then I got slapped in the face with a new diagnosis,” says Menounos, who began suffering from severe leg cramps last June. “I’d scream out loud, I was inconsolable.”

After the diabetes diagnosis, Menounos was prescribed insulin, began wearing a glucose monitor, went on a strict diet, began monitoring her glucose levels and her health majorly improved.

By October, “I was crushing it,” she says. “I felt so good. What else could go wrong?”

About a month later she was back in the hospital, this time “with excruciating abdominal pain coupled with diarrhea.”

The pain became unbearable, so she underwent a CT scan and extensive testing—all of which revealed nothing. Menounos kept having serious pains, so she advocated for her own health by seeking a whole-body MRI with a company called Prenuvo. The MRI revealed the tumor on her pancreas. She quickly had surgery to remove the tumor along with part of her pancreas, her spleen, a large fibroid and 17 lymph nodes.

“I’m like ‘How in the freaking world can I have a brain tumor and pancreatic cancer?’ ” she says. “All I could think was that I have a baby coming.”

Related: Being a mom AND a caregiver means taking on the impossible, because there’s no other choice

In February (one month after her cancer diagnosis and surgery), Menounos publicly revealed that she and Undergaro were finally expecting their first baby after 10+ years of fertility struggles. While her recovery from the diagnosis and subsequent surgery has been grueling, she’s still excited to welcome her first child (a little girl).

“I’m so grateful and so lucky,” Menounos says. “God granted me a miracle. “I’m going to appreciate having her in my life so much more than I would have before this journey.”