Brandi Glanville says a broken medical system drained her retirement savings. The former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star told Fox News Digital she spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” battling a mysterious, drawn-out illness and emptied her 401(k) to cover it — despite having health insurance the whole time.
“The medical system here is broken,” Glanville said. “So I have, like, from 8 a.m. on, I have creditors from, like, medical things calling me, like from Cedars-Sinai. It’s out of control. Like I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars that I had saved. I emptied my 401(k). And it’s all for medical bills. And I had insurance, and they told me nothing was wrong. I’m so angry. You know, going into my mid-fifties I had a cushion and that’s gone. So it’s very scary right now.”
Glanville revealed in September that she had been diagnosed with a stack of conditions: highly resistant ESBL Klebsiella and Enterobacter with biofilm, coccidioidomycosis (also known as Valley fever), Demodex dermatitis, and mononucleosis. She has said her daily IV treatment alone runs between $3,300 and $6,000 a month.
The financial strain didn’t start there. Glanville previously said she believed she picked up a parasite after a 2023 trip to Morocco. She suffered facial paralysis and was initially diagnosed with stress-induced angioedema. She told Fox News Digital at the time she had already spent more than $70,000 trying to get answers for a medical mystery that disfigured her face and upended her daily life.
Facing the financial hole the bills had dug, Glanville said she had no choice but to go back to work. “I had the leisure of saying no in the past, but then I had all these medical bills and whatnot,” she said. “So I had to say yes. And it was kind of like at a time where I needed to prove to myself that I could do it again.”
A Punishing Return to Work
That return included signing on for “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test,” a show that put her already battered body through another ordeal. Glanville said contestants were trained to fall from a helicopter into the water, but an instructor told her to keep her head up just before her jump — leaving her little time to adjust.
“My head hit the water. It was like a Mack truck – it, like, ran over my head. I thought that was it,” Glanville recalled. “And then a few seconds later, my body hits the water so hard. It was paralyzing almost. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ But it was in slow motion.”
She said she suffered a perforated eardrum, a concussion, a bruised sternum and a cracked rib. Doctors wouldn’t let her fly, so she was taken to the hospital by boat instead. She said she dealt with an intense headache along with rib pain so severe it made breathing and coughing difficult.
Once at the hospital, Glanville said doctors warned she couldn’t fly, could be stuck there for at least two weeks, and might need surgery. After several days of recovery and a follow-up evaluation, she pushed to leave anyway, even though doctors weren’t fully on board with putting her on a plane.
Despite it all, Glanville said she doesn’t regret the attempt. “Honestly, I’m so proud of myself. I feel like a badass, even though I didn’t last long,” she said. “I went in, I conquered, I got hurt, and then I left and that was enough for me.”
“Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test” airs Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. ET on FOX.
