Porsha Williams is opening up about one of the scariest chapters of her life, and she’s doing it so the rest of us don’t have to learn the hard way. The Real Housewives star told CBS Mornings co-anchor Gayle King that she underwent an emergency partial hysterectomy this year after doctors discovered 21 uterine fibroids, the largest about the size of a cantaloupe.
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The 45-year-old says the warning signs were there but initially brushed them off. She had a long menstrual cycle, migraines, and fatigue, and figured it was perimenopause. It wasn’t until after surgery that she realized the fibroids were behind her migraines and low iron levels, and had put her body under stress just from everyday life.
Porsha learned she had a fibroid the same day she found out she was pregnant at 30, and the fibroid outgrew that pregnancy, ending in a miscarriage at four months. A year later she had a myomectomy, but the fibroids came back while she was pregnant with her daughter Pilar. She spent the last month of that pregnancy on bed rest. Pilar, born in 2019, is her rainbow baby. She had also gone through uterine fibroid embolization at some point and believed the fibroids were gone for good.
They weren’t. Porsha says she went along with a friend to a fertility appointment about freezing eggs and asked the doctor for an exam while she was there. The doctor went quiet, and when Porsha looked at the screen and saw circular shapes, her first thought was “Not again.”
A fertility specialist was reportedly in shock and sent her straight for an MRI, and she had surgery in May 2026. The MRI showed a little more than 15 large fibroids, plus endometriosis and another condition involving the uterine lining. When she asked about embolization again, she was told it had to be a hysterectomy, though she’d keep her ovaries. Once surgeons went in, the final count was 21.
Now she says she’s grateful. “I didn’t have a choice about the hysterectomy, but it saved my life,” she wrote in Glamour. She also revealed the fibroids had grown large enough to close off more than 60 percent of her birth canal and put her bladder at risk from their weight. She told Gayle King it didn’t really hit her until she woke up in the hospital bed. She says her quality of life has improved 100% since.
Porsha says she always wanted four kids and grew up with three siblings, so she pictured a big family of her own. After Pilar, she had started seriously thinking about another baby and felt she had the support and finances to make it happen. Her health came first, but that dream is gone, and she’s not pretending otherwise.
Porsha is now back on our screens in Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip, but this reveal is bigger than any reunion. Heavy periods, pelvic pain, bloating, exhaustion, and headaches aren’t things to tough out, and if your body keeps sending you messages, don’t let anybody, including yourself, talk you out of getting checked. Ask for the ultrasound, ask for the MRI, and ask about every option, because Porsha is telling you what waiting can cost.