The Tragedy Of Brandi Glanville's Face Transformation Is So Sad

On December 7, 2024, former "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Brandi Glanville shocked fans with a concerning selfie. The mother of two uploaded the pic to X, formerly Twitter, putting her distorted face on display. "Sick it," she captioned the post. Many fans became concerned after viewing the snap, and dozens asked Glanville what happened. "What happened? I wish I knew I've been in &out of the hospital this passed year 1/2 spent almost every dollar I have trying to figure it out. Some Dr.'s say I have a parasite that jumps around my face. Some say it's stress induced edema. I personally say it's Bravo," Glanville wrote in another post on X.

Sick it! pic.twitter.com/hrtAzRwOCW

— Brandi Glanville (@BrandiGlanville) December 8, 2024

Days later, she offered a health update in an interview with ET. Glanville, who underwent surgery in 2023 in an attempt to resolve whatever was going on, said doctors thought she possibly had a "face parasite." "Where I touch some area, it jumps to the other side. No joke, I have it on video. ... It's legit. ... It lives right here," Glanville said, pointing to her cheek. "And sometimes it goes over here, when it gets mad if I mess with it over here," she told the outlet. She's undergone a variety of tests and treatments, but, as of the time of this writing, things aren't getting any better. 

Brandi Glanville believes that her health started to decline after she filmed Bravo's "Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip" in Morocco in 2023. The year prior, Glanville's altered appearance on "RHUGT" had fans doing a double take.

It was a few months after she returned from filming in 2023 that things with her health started to go south. "I've had some health issues that have affected my ability to talk, my ability to taste food. My face basically would just swell up, like I would go into anaphylactic shock constantly, and I saw 7 doctors, and their answer to it was it was stress-induced angioedema," she told ET in January 2024. Per the Mayo Clinic, angioedema refers to swelling under the skin. It is caused by a variety of things from food or medications to airborne allergens and insect bites. The condition can become life-threatening if the swelling affects the throat, thus blocking a person's airway. 

By October 2023, things got so bad that Glanville ended up in the hospital. At the time, she thought the cause was stress. "I collapsed at home this am and my SON had to call 911 for help! You guys have no idea the amount of stress I'm dealing with," she wrote on X. However, for the most part, Glanville was keeping her spirits up and trying to remain positive as she continued working with specialists in an effort to get to the bottom of what was going on.

Brandi Glanville, who has had no problem discussing what's going on with her face in the past, told ET that she was being treated with various non-invasive techniques designed to increase blood flow to the area. She further revealed that her doctors wanted her to have another MRI and a CAT scan to hopefully get a clearer picture of what was really going on. For Glanville, the light at the end of the tunnel was quite dim, and she was forking out thousands without seeing much in the way of results. In an effort to get better, Glanville has spent about $70,000 of her own money at the time of this writing.

"Honestly, I have so many doctors and I've had so many tests ... I did lab work for $10,000. I ran every test under the sun ... They're like, 'It could be a parasite.' That's, you know, new," she told ET. The former reality television star was doing everything she could to get back to normal. On December 13, Glanville took to X to let her fans know about more steps that she had taken — all of which cost her money, of course. "All fillers that were in my face have been dissolved. I have seen all the best doctors at Cedar Sinai & all the doctors they referred me to," she shared.

In an interview with The U.S. Sun, Brandi Glanville revealed that — in addition to her face distortion — she'd been losing teeth. "I'm not quite back to normal yet. People keep asking me if I've lost weight, and I haven't, I've actually gained weight, but I've lost teeth," she said, adding, "I lost five teeth out of my head, so my face has been looking really thin." She went on to explain that the swelling in her face caused her teeth to shift. "I had a bridge that was very, very old, and unbeknownst to me there was an infected tooth underneath that," she told the outlet.

On December 13, 2024, Glanville posted an update on Instagram. She had an appointment with Dr. Anjali Rajpal at Beverly Hills Dental Arts, who was helping "bring back" her smile. In a video included with the upload, Glanville said that she was really looking forward to being able to eat. "Oh my God, I need to eat," she said. She didn't go into too much detail about what Dr. Rajpal would be doing but told one of her followers that it involved an "amazing new machine."

TMZ caught up with Terry Dubrow to get his take on Brandi Glanville's health. Dubrow, who is known for his roles on "The Real Housewives of Orange County" (he's married to Heather Dubrow) and "Botched," works as a plastic surgeon in California. "I saw one of her interviews, and I've seen the picture where she was swollen, and the one where she was really deflated with the irregular skin," Dr. Dubrow told TMZ. "What I'm concerned about with Brandi is that she has an infectious process or a foreign body reaction to something she's had injected," he added. 

Dr. Dubrow went on to publicly offer help to Glanville, noting the seriousness of the problem. "She has to figure out if there's a microorganism in there. It's not going to be a 'parasite.' It's not going to be from something she ate. It's going to be from something that got into her bloodstream, though, and seeded, maybe some foreign body," he said.

Glanville seemed to be open to trying anything at that point, and shared that she had been in touch with Dr. Dubrow. "We have been in touch and plan to talk thank you for all the love," she shared on X.

Talking about one's health can be daunting, and Brandi Glanville has been extremely vulnerable when it comes to what's been going on with her health-wise. However, she received a great deal of support and well-wishes as she went through a challenging time. "Thank you for all the love and outreach. I am trying to get back to everyone I am so pleasantly overwhelmed. My heart is healing," she wrote on X on December 12, 2024. The next day, she posted a message to X about how she was feeling after going public with her health issues. "Something about not holding this in & hiding out any longer has really lifted a weight off. The truth will set you free," she wrote.

Thankfully, it seems like Glanville has a great support system around her with lots of people who want to help her out. When she shared her story, she also discovered that she had the sympathy of fans who were hopeful that she would be able to resolve her health issues sooner rather than later.