Tarek El Moussa has an eagle-eyed fan to thank for saving his life. The HGTV star shared how a nurse watching “Flip or Flop” noticed something concerning and let his team know.
Tarek El Moussa Shares How a Fan Saved His Life
On November 9, El Moussa took to Instagram to share the details of how “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 received an email from the network,” he recalled.
El Moussa continued, “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.'”
He took the advice seriously, noting that his primary doctor in the past just gave him nose spray and allergy medicine.
“But this time, I said, ‘I’m going to go to a different doctor.’ They did a biopsy. It came back as atypical, meaning it could or could not be cancer,” he explained. “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.”
During surgery, they determined El Moussa had stage 3 thyroid cancer that had spread and he had both his thyroid and lymph nodes removed.
El Moussa also shared that they discovered “an irregular testicle exam from the year before” in his medical records. “I was at my thyroid cancer appointment. Last minute, they had an opening at the ultrasound down the hall. So, I go down the hall for the ultrasound,” he explained.
The HGTV star noted that the ultrasound technician “got real quiet on me,” then asked if he was in pain and recommended an emergency room visit.
“I knew something was wrong. 20 minutes later, I found out I had testicular cancer,” he shared. “So now, I’m 31, two different cancers, thinking I’m gonna die. I’m a young father.”
El Moussa Had a Successful Year Amid His Health Scares
HGTV considered canceling the show due to El Moussa’s health. “My response was, ‘The show’s not done. We’re gonna film my [expletive] rolling into the surgery. I’m gonna film until the end,” he said.
El Moussa added, “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.”
The HGTV star is now cancer-free and has achieved great success.
“I’m most proud to say that year that I had the surgeries and I fought the two cancers and I was in hospitals, I quadrupled the size of my house flipping business,” he noted.
Fans flooded the comments section with messages praising the nurse who noticed a potential health problem and let El Moussa know.
“All because of a fan who’s a nurse … An angel was watching out for you that moment!” one fan wrote.
On his TikTok video, one fan asked, “Have you ever met her?” El Moussa responded, “Yes!”
