A TV star has opened up about how he found out he had stage 3 cancer - after a viewer spotted something unusual while he was on screen.
Tarek El Moussa, who is known for hosting home renovation television shows, was stunned when he received an "eerie" email out of the blue from a viewer - which ended up saving his life.
The 44-year-old was diagnosed with thyroid and testicular cancer in 2013 at the age of 31 after a fan spotted an unusual lump on his neck while watching his show.
He told realestate.com.au: "A fan’s email saved my life. Going into Season 2 of ‘Flip or Flop,’ I remember getting an eerie email from my production company saying they had received an email from the network.
"The email said, ‘I’m a registered nurse from Texas. I noticed there’s a lump on Tarek’s neck. This is not a joke. He needs to get it checked out."
El Moussa revealed that he'd already been to see a doctor about the lump, but his physician had dismissed it and prescribed him "nose spray and allergy medicine" instead.
After receiving that worrying email, El Moussa decided to get a second opinion from another doctor who sent him to have a biopsy on the mass.
He revealed: "They did a biopsy. It came back as atypical, meaning it could or could not be cancer. I went in for exploratory surgery, which means they were just gonna open me up, see what’s going on. I woke up five hours later. My entire family looking down on me, crying."
The surgery confirmed that El Moussa had Stage 3 thyroid cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes and had to undergo a further operation to remove the thyroid and affected nodes.
The experience had also rattled El Moussa into getting further checks, fearing something else had been missed in past medicals, and found out he'd had an "irregular testicle exam" result among his past tests.
He raised it with his doctor at a thyroid cancer appointment and they sent him down the hall to get an ultrasound as there was a last-minute opening to get a scan that day.
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During the exam, El Moussa noticed the ultrasound technician suddenly went quiet, which is when he knew something was wrong.
Just 20 minutes later, he had been told he also had testicular cancer
"So now, I’m 31, two different cancers, thinking I’m gonna die. I’m a young father,” El Moussa, whose daughter Taylor was born in 2010, added.
Thankfully, El Moussa has now been in remission for over 10 years, and he and his then-wife Christina Haack went on to welcome their second child, a son called Brayden, in August 2015, one year after he was given the all-clear.
The couple split in 2016 and El Moussa went on to marry Selling Sunset star Heather Rae Young in 2021, welcoming their first child together, a son called Tristan, in 2021.