Reality TV star Porsha Williams has revealed she underwent an emergency partial hysterectomy after doctors found 21 uterine fibroids, including one the size of a cantaloupe.
Williams, 45, said the surgery took place in May 2026 after a fertility specialist discovered the extent of the problem during an examination and sent her for an MRI.
“It all happened so fast. It really didn’t hit me until I woke up in the hospital bed,” she said in an interview with Gayle King.
Williams had been experiencing fibroids since her late 20s and had previously undergone uterine fibroid embolisation, a procedure intended to shrink them without affecting the uterus. She believed the fibroids had gone.
When symptoms returned, she attributed them to possible perimenopause. She said she was experiencing a long menstrual cycle, migraines and fatigue.
The fibroids were first identified when Williams was trying to have children. During one pregnancy, she said, a fibroid grew larger than the baby by four months, resulting in a miscarriage.
She later gave birth to her daughter, Pilar, in 2019. Williams said she had believed she was finished having children after her divorce and felt she had a strong support system.
She discovered the fibroids had returned while accompanying a friend to an appointment about freezing her eggs. Williams decided to ask for an examination herself.
“She started looking into, you know, doing the exam, and she went silent,” Williams said. “And I looked at the screen, and all I could see was, like, black, and then I started seeing some circular lines. And I’m like, ‘Not again. Not again.’ They had come back.”
Williams said the fertility specialist was “in shock” at the number of fibroids found during the vaginal examination before arranging the MRI. She subsequently underwent the emergency surgery two weeks later.
She said she was sharing her experience to encourage other women to seek medical advice and advocate for themselves.
“We have to stop diagnosing ourselves,” Williams said. “There are so many different things when it comes to a woman that you need to get checked, and we need to learn to advocate for ourselves.”
