Porsha Williams discovered 21 uterine fibroids, including one the size of a cantaloupe, requiring emergency partial hysterectomy.
Williams had struggled with fibroids in the past, leading to a miscarriage, but didn’t recognize the signs this time.
Williams encourages women to advocate for their health and not self-diagnose, as her story could help others get checked sooner.
Porsha Williams thought she might have another baby in her future. Instead, she found herself facing an emergency surgery that would change her plans for good.
Source: Joi Pearson / Getty
The Real Housewives of Atlanta star is opening up about the shocking health scare that led to an emergency partial hysterectomy after doctors discovered 21 uterine fibroids, including one she says had grown to the size of a cantaloupe.
Williams revealed the news during a Friday, Sept. 18 appearance on CBS Mornings with Gayle King, where she got candid about the diagnosis and the impact it had on her plans to grow her family.
“I’ve always fantasized about having a little boy, or maybe a little sister for her,” Williams said, referring to her 7-year-old daughter, Pilar Jhena.
Unfortunately, that dream took an unexpected turn.
Williams wasn’t even at the doctor that day specifically for herself.
She had accompanied a friend to an appointment to discuss freezing her eggs. Since they were visiting Williams’ fertility doctor, she decided to get checked out, too. Williams said she immediately noticed something was off when the doctor went quiet during the exam.
“She started looking into doing the exam and she went silent,” Williams recalled. “And I looked at the screen and all I could see was black, and then I started seeing some circular lines. And I was like, ‘Not again. Not again.’”
That “not again” feeling came from experience. Williams had battled fibroids years earlier, and this wasn’t her first serious run-in with them.
The doctor quickly referred her to a fertility specialist. During the examination, Williams said the specialist was stunned by what she found.
“When she did the vaginal check, she was in shock because everything had pretty much flattened,” Williams said.
An MRI was done just hours later, and surgery was scheduled roughly two weeks after that. That’s when she discovered she had 21 fibroids.
“It all happened so fast,” she said. “It really didn’t hit me, hit me until I woke up in the hospital bed.”
Looking back, Porsha said there were signs that something wasn’t right.
She had been dealing with unusually long periods, migraines, extreme fatigue and mood swings. Her menstrual cycle had also stretched to around six weeks. But at 45, Williams figured the changes could be related to perimenopause because fibroids weren’t exactly on her radar.
That was particularly surprising considering she’d dealt with them before.
Williams was first diagnosed with fibroids in her late 20s while struggling with fertility. After she became pregnant, doctors discovered a fibroid and initially believed it might degenerate as the pregnancy progressed.
Instead, it kept growing.
“It ended up outgrowing the first baby at 4 months, so I had a miscarriage,” Williams said.
She later underwent a myomectomy to remove the fibroids while preserving her uterus, along with a fibroid embolization procedure. When she eventually became pregnant with Pilar, who was born in March 2019, the fibroid fortunately degenerated.
After her divorce and while raising Pilar with a strong support system around her, Williams had started thinking seriously about expanding her family. But discovering 21 fibroids forced her to confront a reality she wasn’t expecting.
The partial hysterectomy means Williams can no longer carry another pregnancy herself. And while she’s still recovering from the procedure, she’s also opening up about the experience to encourage other women to listen to their bodies.
“We have to stop diagnosing ourselves,” she said. “There’s so many different things when it comes to a woman that you need to get checked. We need to know how to advocate for ourselves.”
Williams has been open about her struggles with fibroids in the past, but she admitted that talking publicly about having a hysterectomy has felt different.
“I don’t know, there’s some stigma talking about having a hysterectomy,” she said. “I’ve always spoken about fibroids, but speaking about the hysterectomy is new.”
She also wondered whether seeing another woman openly discuss fibroids could have helped her recognize the signs sooner.
“If I would have seen somebody like me sitting here with you talking about fibroids, it would have clicked something for me to even ask for it,” Williams said. “I had to ask my doctor to check for fibroids after something was going on that was wrong.”
Now, Williams is hoping her story does exactly that for someone else: encourage them to ask questions, get checked and advocate for themselves when something doesn’t feel right.
