--- title: "Real Housewife Details Battle With Parasite Living Inside Her Face" description: "Bravo star Brandi Glanville claims that she has a parasite living in her face that has caused her massive physical pain and embarrassment." date: "2024-12-12" modified: "2024-12-12" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/real-housewife-brandi-glanville-parasite" categories: - "Health & Medicine" - "Medical" - "Parasites" - "Pathogens" tags: - "bravo" - "celebrities" - "parasite" - "plastic surgery" --- # Real Housewife Details Battle With Parasite Living Inside Her Face ![Bravo star Brandi Glanville claims that she has a parasite living in her face that has caused her massive physical pain and embarrassment.]() *\Image: Brandi Glanville via X / Getty / Futurism\* "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Brandi Glanville claims that she has a parasite living in her face that has caused her massive physical pain and embarrassment for a year-and-a-half. In an [interview with *Entertainment Weekly*](), the 52-year-old Bravo personality said she's spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to figure out what was causing a strange, painful aberration on her face. "Honestly, I have so many doctors and I’ve had so many tests," Glanville told the celebrity news outlet. "I did lab work for $10,000." Though doctors initially thought the pock-marking on the original RHOBH cast member's face could have been from dissolving fillers, she claimed she hadn't had any done in a long time and that the old ones she'd gotten had already dissolved. Originally [diagnosed with angioedema](), a hive-like facial disorder that causes swelling under the skin, one of the reality star's doctors eventually suggested she may have a parasite. "That was, you know, new," Glanville recalled. In a [tweet]() posted a few days before the *ET* interview went live, the controversial Californian referenced — and joked about — what was "going on" with her face and health. "Some \[doctors\] say I have a parasite that jumps around my face," Glanville tweeted. "Some say it's stress induced edema. I personally say it's Bravo." Along with being painful and causing extreme swelling, Glanville said that the possible parasite seemed to cause her difficulty speaking. A rigorous course of antibiotics gave her some relief, but it was too expensive to keep up. "I wanted to quit \[the medication\] since it was like $2,000 a week," she told *ET*. "I did it for six weeks and it’s back." Glanville is still not sure where she got the alleged parasite, but she thinks it might have gotten into her skin when she was filming a [still-unaired season]() of "Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip" in Morocco in early 2023. "We had food sitting out for hours on end and some of it was meat, in Morocco," the real housewife told *ET*. "Six months after I got back from Morocco, I started having this speaking thing and the swelling up thing, it started in July and we’re still here trying to figure it out." Having now spent roughly $70,000 on treatment and seen "every \[type\] of doctor under the Sun," Glanville said the parasite still lives on in her face and will "[jump]()" from one side to the other "if it gets mad" from her touching it — and even claims to have video of it doing so. "I’ve been on meds this whole year," she said. "I don’t socialize, I don’t go out, and I’m just spending all of my money on trying to figure out what’s wrong with me." It sounds like a pretty freaky situation indeed — though by the looks of her in the recorded interview, Glanville's parasite seems to have calmed down for now. **More on parasites:** [*Man Who Bragged About Having a Literal Brain Worm to Be Appointed Head of the US Health Department*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()