Brandi Glanville is going broke amid struggle to cure parasitic infection on her face, reveals how much she's spent
The former The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star caught the infection while in Morocco shooting The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club 2 in 2023.
Now, more than two years later, Glanville has gone to more than 20 doctors to get help with her condition and is struggling to pay her bills.
'They didn't believe me,' said of the many physicians she visited.
'My insurance was like, "Nothing's wrong with you. It's just inflammation and old filler,"' she told US Weekly, referring to what she called the 'crazy lumps' on her face.
'My face started, like, moving around and doing things. I started to lose my eyesight in my left eye. It's insane,' she told the outlet.
'At first, my face was blowing up and getting really swollen. Then it started sinking in, and I felt like something was just eating me from the inside. I'm like, "It's eating my flesh."'
The reality star said she has spent more than $130,000 looking for a cure. 'I'm paying the minimum on my credit cards. I've exhausted my savings,' she said.
'At my age, I feel like such a loser in a way, because I was taking care of everything. I was together. I had great credit. Now I'm scared about every little thing.'
In the US, medical bills are one of the top reasons a person might file for bankruptcy, according to AnnualReviews.org.
Glanville has turned to healthcare strategist Rachel Strauss, who calls herself the PBM Princess, for help contesting some of the charges her insurance hasn't covered.
'Where it does fall on her responsibility is working with the hospitals she saw to review what was billed and making sure it was billed properly,' Strauss told the publication.
'There are certain things that were truly emergencies that doctors will validate, and [we can get] those reduced however we can.'
Strauss will help Granville negotiate service fees and come up with a payment plan that will allow her to continue to support herself.
She also said it was important that the Drinking and Dating author get the insurance company to pay for some of the out-of-network visits she made to doctors, after providers within the insurance network were unable to find out what was wrong with her.
'Now that she has a definitive diagnosis, she's able to go back, and that's where she can start advocating financially,' Straus explained.
'There was something wrong, and that's where we have to go back and make sure that insurance understands that, because that is why she went out of network.'
Glanville has also found a new physician to help her. Dr. Michael Scoma, is an infectious disease expert in New York City.
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