What Is Going On with Brandi Glanville's Face? Here's Why She Thinks a Parasite Is to Blame for Her Facial Disfiguration

Yahoo

13-03-2025

Brandi Glanville is speaking out — not about The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills drama, but rather, her ongoing health struggles.
The Bravo star has been documenting her journey since she started getting treatment for a mystery illness that has been causing a facial disfigurement in 2023. It all began around July when she was diagnosed with stress-induced angioedema — a condition that caused her face to swell up. But nearly two years and numerous treatments and tests later, Glanville is still grappling with her health issues, which she now suspects are caused by a facial parasite.
During a December 2024 appearance on Page Six's Virtual Reali-Tea podcast, The Traitors alum opened up about the "rough two years" she has been having and the mental toll it has taken.
'It's hard to hide out during Christmas when everyone's having their parties. It's depressing. It just hurts my brain and my heart,' she said. 'The pain is more mental than anything, because I have been hiding and going through a deep, deep depression. Even if I could work now, at this point, I couldn't."
So what's happening with Brandi Glanville's face? Here's everything to know about the parasite The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum suspects is disfiguring her face.
For nearly two years, Glanville has been facing an ongoing struggle with facial disfigurement.
During the Virtual Reali-Tea podcast, the TV personality shared she's been working with doctors after noticing her face was starting to "sink in."
"I prefer [my face] when it's a little swollen, to be honest,' Glanville said. 'When it's only swollen on one side, it's not great. But the sinking in thing is killing me slowly, because I just feel like I look like a crackhead.'
She added, "I've had days of looking normal, not weeks. I wish. But it comes and goes."
Glanville shared with Entertainment Tonight in December 2024 that she believes she contracted a "parasite" from her time in Morocco, North Africa, while filming Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip.
"We had food sitting out for hours on end, and some of it was meat," she explained to Entertainment Tonight, adding that it started in July 2023, "six months" after she returned from Morocco.
Whether it's a parasite or not, one thing is for certain: Glanville is "sick of being sick."
'I'm sick of hearing myself complain. I'm sick of everything. I'm sick of the way I look. I'm sick of, like, just hiding out in my house,' Glanville said during a January 2025 episode of her podcast Brandi Glanville Unfiltered.
Glanville has been experiencing a long list of symptoms over the last few months.
The former model shared on Entertainment Tonight that she can see and feel the unknown "parasite" move within her face if she "messes with it," describing that it looks like "tiny bubbles bursting" on her skin.
"I feel like it's s---ing or having babies in my face," she added.
Glanville posted an update on X on March 8 and outlined her symptoms, which include "painful lumps" in her jaw bone area, as well as on the side and back of her neck.
'I have chills & a constant oily foul tasting drainage from face into mouth. It's acidic & is eating away at my teeth,' she added. 'Plus all of my lymph nodes in head & neck are swollen. Drs at Kaiser say I'm fine :/ HELP ME."
Glanville has visited an immunologist, an infectious disease doctor, a rheumatologist and an ENT in hopes of finding a solution, as she noted to Entertainment Tonight.
"I've been to every doctor under the sun," she told the outlet. "I've been on meds this whole year, I don't socialize. I don't go out. I've just been spending all my money on trying to figure out what's wrong with me."
Glanville revealed she has spent 'over $70,000' so far — including $10,000 on lab work — and every treatment has just been a temporary fix.
In December 2024, she shared on X that she had dissolved all of the filler in her face and that she was seeing "all the best doctors" at Cedar Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and "the doctors they referred me to."
One treatment plan — IV antibiotics and fungal medication she said were prescribed by doctors at Cedar Sinai — seemed to be working for some time, though Glanville couldn't stay on them long-term.
"I was getting better I looked normal but I couldn't afford to stay on them," Glanville wrote on X on March 6. "I was forced to see drs outside my insurance because the drs at Kaiser had no clue."
In January 2025, Glanville announced on X that she had turned to Botched star and plastic surgeon Dr. Terry Dubrow for help.
'Yes guys @DrDubrow took 4 tiny biopsy's from my face and neck so we can continue to get better 💕ez pz no pain I was in and out on 30 minutes now we wait🙏🙏🙏🙏,' Glanville wrote.
A few days later, she posted a video on X of herself using a lymphatic drainage machine, captioned, "@DrDubrow⁩ let's get this f-----."
"I will shake for the rest of my life if this thing gets out of my body," she said in the video.
Despite months of searching for answers, Glanville is still awaiting an official diagnosis.
In December 2024, Dr. Dubrow told TMZ that he doesn't believe Glanville's disfiguration stems from a parasite, but rather "an infectious process or a foreign body reaction to something she's had injected."
"There are these two kinds of microorganisms, one's called a Microbacterium and the other is called a fungus, and they can be very difficult to treat and could take six to 12 months of antibiotics to treat,' he added, describing Brandi's situation as a "ticking time bomb."
"Every minute the microorganism is allowed to stay in her skin and do potential damage she could suffer worse for it," he continued. "It could be more difficult to treat and she could form more scars and more nodules."
Although Glanville is still awaiting official results from her biopsies, she gave a small update in the comment section of an Instagram photo she posted on March 6.
'So what did your biopsy report say? What is the treatment?' one follower asked in the comments, to which Glanville replied, "No cancer but the cultures take six weeks to grow so no news yet but 🤞🏻."
One day later, she wrote on X that her face felt "worse than ever" and had "literally melted away."
Read the original article on People