Brandi Glanville says surgeons recently removed a “black mass” from her face, the latest twist in a medical ordeal that has dragged on for years and still has no clear diagnosis.
The 53-year-old former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star gave the update on Friday’s episode of her podcast, “Unfiltered.” “I’m still figuring out my sickness,” she said.
Glanville said doctors took out several black masses during a recent surgery, though she admitted, “We’re not sure what that is yet.” She said she has an antibiotic-resistant infection in her glands and is “on antibiotics almost 24 hours a day,” though new medication has brought some improvement. Part of her face, she said, “isn’t moving right now.”
“I just can’t wait to go back outside and be normal,” she said.
Glanville also revealed that a friend, Markee, recently died and that she couldn’t attend his memorial because fluid had built up in her ears. “I keep on thinking and talking myself into this crazy thing like, ‘Oh my god, people hate me. Mark’s family hates me,’” she said. “Like I couldn’t fly. I couldn’t drive.”
She said her 23-year-old son, Mason, asked her “what’s the point?” when she talked about wanting to get out of the house despite her illness. She told him, “Mason, I want to fall in love again. I don’t want to sit home every night and be a recluse.”
A Long List of Diagnoses
Glanville first noticed symptoms in 2023, and by 2024 had a bruised, swollen cheek. She has since said she’s been diagnosed with Demodex dermatitis, mononucleosis, Valley Fever (Coccidioidomycosis), and “highly resistant” ESBL Klebsiella and Enterobacter with biofilm.
In October she said she was headed into an exploratory surgery so her doctor could investigate what she called possible “fungal balls or something alive.” “He’s, like, literally going in there with a power washer, basically, and knives and all this s–t,” she said. “And then he’s spinning my blood and doing this platelet thing on the inside of my face.”
Her explanations for the cause have shifted over time. In 2024 she blamed Bravo, saying in a social media post that she was “miserable and depressed” and that “stress will kill you.” Some physicians reportedly suspected a parasite, others pointed to stress-induced edema. By this past February she suspected her 20-year-old breast implants were responsible. In June she said she’d been diagnosed with a benign facial tumor in a lymph node.
“I just want this s–t OUT of my body,” she wrote in an earlier social media post. “I want my health back. I want my life back. I want to feel like me again.”
