Nurse watching HGTV noticed lump on Tarek El Moussa's neck. Her 'fan mail' ended up saving his life
Tarek, who had previously visited his primary doctor, was prescribed a nasal spray allergy medicine.
They say not to trust strangers, but when a fan detected something strange on HGTV's Tarek El Moussa's neck, they immediately wrote a fanmail to the reality TV star that ultimately saved his life. Sharing the miraculous story on his Instagram account (@therealtarekelmoussa) on November 10, the star shed light on a discovery that even the doctors had failed to detect.
Tarek El Moussa was going into the second season of Flip or Flop when his production company received an "eerie" email from a fan. "The email said, 'I'm a registered nurse from Texas. I noticed a lump on Tarek's neck. This is not a joke, he needs to get it checked out.'" Tarek, who had previously visited his primary doctor, was prescribed a nasal spray allergy medicine. However, after receiving the fan mail, he decided to visit a different doctor. Tarek got himself a biopsy, which came out to be atypical, meaning it could or could not be cancer. He later proceeded to have an exploratory surgery, where he learned the shocking truth.
"Five hours later, I wake up from the surgery with my entire family looking down on me, crying. Turns out I had stage 3 thyroid cancer. It had spread to my lymph nodes, so they removed my entire thyroid and lymph nodes, and because of that, I ended up looking through old medical records to look for any irregular testicle exam from the year before," he revealed. However, it doesn't end here.
Tarek was at his thyroid cancer appointment when there was a last-minute ultrasound. "The technician was a younger guy, and it was an uncomfortable thing. But I'm a talkative guy, so I talk a lot and then he goes real quiet on me," Tarek recalls. The technician asked Tarek if he was in any pain, and when he admitted it, the technician suggested that he go to the emergency room. "I knew something was wrong. Twenty minutes later, I found out I had testicular cancer." Tarek stated that HGTV considered canceling his show, Flip or Flop, due to his cancer diagnosis. "My response was, 'The show's not done. We're gonna film my a** rolling into the surgery. I'm gonna film until the end,'" he shared. "It was really important to me that I didn't quit, to prove to myself and my family that nothing would stop me from building what I was building."
Fortunately, he has been in remission for over 10 years, as he ends his clip saying, "I'm most proud to say that the year I had the surgeries and I fought the two cancers and I was in hospitals, I quadrupled the size of my house-flipping business." A 2022 study by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that 5.7% of emergency department diagnoses were inaccurate, and around 2% of patients suffered preventable harm as a result. If Tarek had ignored the fan email from the nurse, he may not have been able to discover the hidden diseases he was suffering from.
Soon after the video went viral, many users shared their thoughts in the comments. @sms4734 wrote, "God bless that nurse that noticed and notified the show!" @emilykatebaker commented, "Did you ever get in touch with the nurse who sent the email? What a legend." @mountains__2024 wrote, "Remember it was the nurse who prompted you to seek medical attention. Not the doctors. The doctors also didn’t initially follow up on the testicular information either. Moral of the story. Be your own advocate. BTW, love, love your shows"
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