Brandi Glanville hasn’t felt “normal” in two years.
“I’ve never felt suicidal before, [but earlier this summer], I didn’t want to be here,” Glanville, 52, tells Us Weekly in a new exclusive interview. “And if it wasn’t for my kids, I don’t know that I would be here.” (Glanville shares sons Mason and Jake with ex-husband Eddie Cibrian.)
Years after her initial departure from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Glanville was back at the top of her reality TV game when she signed on for the planned fourth season of The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip in Morocco in early 2023. She had just won over audiences again on The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club and season 1 of The Traitors, but things took a turn when she was accused of sexual misconduct by RHUGT costar Caroline Manzo. (In court documents related to the incident, an executive producer stated that Manzo felt “disrespected” by Glanville but claimed Glanville did not “sexually violate” Manzo.)
When she returned home from Morocco, Glanville slipped into a depression about the controversy and subsequently discovered she had contracted a parasite while filming.
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“Almost immediately upon landing, my phone started blowing up about these articles that were incorrect and not true about what happened in Morocco with Caroline, and I immediately took on a ton of anxiety,” she tells Us. “And I was just trying to get my head around what was happening and why it was happening. I was on the couch in a fetal position for four months.”
When Glanville attempted to socialize again, she started noticing “crazy lumps” in 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 says. “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.’”
Glanville’s most extreme symptoms over the last two years also include gray spots on her “sunken-in” face, fluid that comes out of her left ear or drains into her mouth and extreme headaches.
Glanville has seen 21 doctors, paying for several out of pocket when she couldn’t get answers from providers within her insurance. “They didn’t believe me,” she says. “My insurance was like, ‘Nothing’s wrong with you. It’s just inflammation and old filler.’”
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Glanville has spent at least $130,000 on medical bills and is struggling financially.
“I’m paying the minimum on my credit cards. I’ve exhausted my savings. At my age, I feel like such a loser in a way, because I was taking care of everything,” she says. “I was together. I had great credit. Now I’m scared about every little thing.”
Acknowledging that “medical bills are the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy,” Glanville has started working with Rachel Strauss, a healthcare strategist, known as the PBM Princess.
“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. There are certain things that were truly emergencies that doctors will validate, and [we can get] those reduced however we can,” Strauss tells Us. “Once we negotiate the service fees, we’ll work on a payment plan so that Brandi can live and have a roof over her head and be able to have food and everything that you need to sustain.”
Despite the financial strain caused by all the appointments, Strauss notes that it’s important Glanville advocated for herself when she believed the doctors within her insurance plan weren’t listening to her.
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“Now that she has a definitive diagnosis, she’s able to go back, and that’s where she can start advocating financially,” she says. “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 started new treatments with Dr. Michael R. Scoma, an infectious disease specialist who reached out to her via X. One day before her visit with Us, she began Dr. Scoma’s multiphase treatment plan, which kicks off with several weeks of intravenous antibiotics via a PICC line to treat her longstanding infection and its secondary effects.
“We can expect to see meaningful progress within the next few weeks,” Dr. Scoma tells Us. “And I do believe Brandi can make a full recovery.”
Calling herself a “hopeful wreck,” Glanville says she wants to get her life back.
“I was sleeping until 5 p.m. I couldn’t get out of bed. Everything ached — at one point, I couldn’t move my neck. I couldn’t get out of bed for four hours. And I’m just like, ‘This is not an existence,’” she tells Us. “I stay in this house every day. I’m paying crazy amounts of rent. I’m worrying about money all day long. I have brain fog. I get one thing done a day, and I’m just frazzled.”
Just last week, when she hit a low, she called her mom for support.
“I go, ‘Mom, I know you have Grandma. I know you have Dad. I know you have your plate full, but I need you to come,’” Glanville recalls. “And so she, like, dropped everything and came for a couple days. I colored her hair, and we had girl time.”
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That pampering also included the now-viral clip of Glanville putting Nair on her face.
“I was just going down every rabbit hole, and my face loved exfoliation. It was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna get whatever this is out.’ So I would exfoliate, like, five times a day, and I wouldn’t even put moisturizer on and it was back to oily — and I never had oily skin,” she tells Us. “If Nair dissolves hair, maybe, it’ll dissolve whatever’s in my skin. And my mom’s like, ‘You do your Brandi.’ Like, when I was little, I used Comet on my teeth because I wanted white teeth. That’s just my idea. I’m a do-it-yourselfer. It doesn’t always work out. But honestly, she put tea bags on my skin after to make it, like, cool down, and they were brown, and so it looked like my face was scorched when really it was just a little bit pink.”
Following treatments from Dr. Scoma, however, Glanville hopes to be back to “dancing on tables and [drinking] sake.”
“No, I just want to leave my house,” she says again. “I’m in Groundhog Day.”
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
