Why did Porsha Williams need an emergency hysterectomy? RHOA Star opens up on health battle

Porsha Williams is opening up about a deeply personal health battle that led to an emergency hysterectomy. The Real Housewives of Atlanta star revealed that doctors found 21 fibroids in her uterus.Porsha Williams has opened up about her emergency hysterectomy. (AP Photo/Richard Shotwell)Why did Porsha Williams have an emergency hysterectomy?RHOA star Porsha Williams has opened up about a health issue she had kept private.She spoke about the emergency hysterectomy for the first time in an essay for Glamour, published Friday, September 18.According to CBS News, she also told “CBS Mornings” co-anchor Gayle King that she had an emergency partial hysterectomy this year after doctors found 21 uterine fibroids, one the size of a cantaloupe.”It all happened so fast. It really didn’t hit me until I woke up in the hospital bed,” Williams, who appeared in season four of “Traitors” and is currently on “Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip,” said in an exclusive “CBS Mornings” interview.Also read: Did Lizzie Borden really kill her parents? Did she have kids? Details amid Netflix’s Monster Season 4How her fibroid struggle beganAs per CBS News, Williams has been dealing with fibroids since her late 20s. They were first found when she began trying to have children and faced some fertility issues.”I found out I had fibroids the same day I found out I was pregnant. I was 30, trying for my first child, and dealing with fertility issues that had landed me with a special,” Williams, 45, wrote in her Glamour essay. “The fibroid outgrew that pregnancy, and I ended up having a miscarriage at four month.”According to US Magazine, she had a myomectomy a year later, but the fibroids grew back while she was pregnant with her daughter, Pilar. Williams shares Pilar, now 7, with her ex, Dennis McKinley. She said she was on bed rest during the last month of her pregnancy as the fibroids began to degenerate. Pilar was born in 2019.Also read: Millie Bob Brown, Jake Bongiovi welcome second child through adoption, share first glimpseFibroids returned despite treatmentAfter Pilar’s birth, the fibroids “came back with a vengeance,” Williams wrote. She had fibroid embolization, hoping to keep her fertility. “It seemed to work,” she recalled.She also told CBS that she had a long menstrual cycle, migraines and fatigue. “I had symptoms but, you know, I’m 45 years old, and I’m thinking, oh, maybe perimenopause,” she recalled.Later, she went with a friend to a fertility appointment and asked the doctor for an exam. “And I’m like, ‘Not again. Not again.’ They had come back,” Williams said.A fertility special was “in shock” the number of fibroids and sent her straight for an MRI. Two weeks later, in May 2026, she had surgery.Life after surgery and her message to womenWriting in her Glamour essay, “I woke up after the surgery and thought, ‘A part of me is gone.'” She added, “There’s a stigma to it, as if you’re somehow less of a woman without your uterus.”Williams struggled with choosing lifesaving surgery at the cost of her fertility. “I didn’t have a choice about the hysterectomy, but it saved my life. My quality of life has improved 100 percent since,” she wrote.She ended her essay talking about her daughter. “I’m even more present, more grateful, because when I look at her, I see a true miracle.”