Brandi Glanville underwent surgery to remove a mysterious “black mass” from her face as her unexplained health crisis drags on.
The former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star, 53, revealed the procedure during Friday’s episode of her “Unfiltered” podcast, explaining that doctors extracted one of “several” dark masses. “We’re not sure what that is yet,” she admitted.
Glanville has been trapped in a grueling medical spiral since 2023, when symptoms first appeared. By 2024, the Bravo alum was sporting a bruised and swollen cheek that fueled public speculation and her own desperate search for answers. Physicians have floated competing theories over the months: a parasite migrating across her face, stress-induced edema, and even the possibility that her two-decade-old breast implants were triggering the reaction.
The reality star’s current diagnosis roster is staggering. In September, she disclosed she is battling Demodex dermatitis, mononucleosis, Valley Fever, and “highly resistant” ESBL Klebsiella and Enterobacter infections with biofilm. She also received a June diagnosis of a benign facial tumor in a lymph node. “I just want this s–t OUT of my body,” she wrote in a social media post. “I want my health back. I want my life back. I want to feel like me again.”
Her facial paralysis has become impossible to ignore. During the podcast, Glanville gestured toward the left side of her face and noted that “this side of [her] face isn’t moving right now.” The disfigurement has kept her largely housebound, dependent on near-constant medication. She is “on antibiotics almost 24 hours a day,” she said, though new prescriptions have brought modest relief to the antibiotic-resistant gland infection.
The isolation has taken a social toll. Glanville missed the memorial service for her friend Markee, who died recently, because fluid buildup in her ears made travel impossible. “Like I couldn’t fly,” she lamented. “I couldn’t drive.” The absence gnawed at her. “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. She emphasized that attending “just wasn’t possible” given her condition.
Her son Mason, 23, has confronted her with blunt questions about her priorities. When Glanville voiced her need to get back out into the world, he asked her “what’s the point?” She recalled her response to him: “Mason, I want to fall in love again. I don’t want to sit home every night and be a recluse.”
The surgical intervention she had been anticipating came after an October podcast episode where she described an upcoming “exploratory surgery.” Her doctor planned to investigate what she characterized as potentially “fungal balls or something alive.” She painted a vivid picture of the procedure: “He’s, like, literally going in there with a power washer, basically, and knives and all this s–t. And then he’s spinning my blood and doing this platelet thing on the inside of my face.” She had also been preparing to have a fungal ball removed from her face.
Glanville’s frustration with Bravo spilled into public view in 2024, when she posted that she was “miserable and depressed” and declared that “stress will kill you,” implying the network bore responsibility for her facial condition. The allegation added a layer of conflict to her already overwhelming medical saga.
Through it all, her immediate focus remains elemental. “I’m still figuring out my sickness,” she said on the podcast. The uncertainty clearly wears on her. She said she “just can’t wait to go back outside and be normal.”
The former “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant’s health journey has become a public chronicle of dead ends, shifting diagnoses, and invasive treatments. Each apparent development—the implant theory, the parasite suspicion, the tumor finding, now the black mass removal—has offered a potential explanation without delivering resolution.
Glanville continues to host her “Unfiltered” podcast while navigating the physical and emotional fallout of her condition.