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Brandi Glanville has undergone a life-saving surgery after discovering her “illegal” breast implants were ruptured and leaking.
Following a years-long health crisis, which seemed to have been sparked by a facial parasite she contracted while filming the Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip in Morocco, the 53-year-old Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum was forced to go under the knife to avoid further health challenges.
“I’m just scared to death,” Brandi admitted to the Daily Enquirer, via a report from In Touch Weekly on February 11, before the surgery. “It’s something that I could die from if I hadn’t figured it out.”
“I kind of put myself in this, like, three-year self-imposed prison, and I started to feel like crap, and I didn’t know why,” she continued.
According to Brandi, what started as a facial parasite led to internal issues. And despite countless visits to different doctors, her symptoms, which included blurred vision and stiff muscles, didn’t improve.
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After struggling for years, Brandi found a community of others who had dealt with similar situations and ultimately began to suspect her breast implants, which she got in 2007 and are now considered “illegal,” were the problem.
“I have this little online village [and] we’re all sharing what works for us, what helps us, and a lot of us have the same exact symptoms,” she shared. “Most of them are women that I’m speaking to, and what we didn’t realize or even talk about was how many of us had breast implants.”
Once she began researching breast implant illness and noticed that her right breast was smaller than the left, Brandi had a sonogram.
“The woman [who] did the sonogram was like, ‘Brandi, you need to get those out yesterday,’” she recalled. “She’s like, ‘You have a slow leak in your left [implant] and your right [implant] is completely ruptured, and it’s in all of your lymph nodes under both arms. That’s probably why, whatever’s going on in your face, it can’t drain because your lymph nodes are clogged with silicone.’”
Following the visit, Brandi enlisted Dr. Ariel Ourian, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who specializes in explant surgery, to remove her breast implants. However, a scar tissue buildup from a previous lumpectomy presented a problem.
“[Dr. Ourian] said there’s scar tissue built up and he doesn’t know what he’s going to find in the lymph nodes and how much scraping he’s going to do, so our second plan would be to put another implant in — which I was like, ‘Nope!’ … I’m like, I don’t want silicone in my body at all,” Brandi noted.
“I want to look better again. I want to work again. I want to have energy again,” she added.