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Vicki Gunvalson confronted Tamra Judge after Tamra shared details of Vicki’s health with their fellow cast members during the latest episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County.
Although Tamra, 59, maintained that Vicki, 64, was “normal” and “fine,” Vicki said the situation was far more complicated. She criticized Tamra for repeating information from a medical appointment, discussed her eight brain surgeries and described the many serious health challenges she has faced throughout her life.
“It was unfortunate that she happened to be there when the results were explained to me,” Vicki said during the October 1 installment of the RHOC: After Show.
Tamra, meanwhile, remembered the doctor mentioning white spots on Vicki’s brain.
“The doctor said, ‘You have white spots on your brain, but that’s normal,’” Tamra recalled. “I told her, ‘I have them, too,’ but she interpreted it as meaning she had brain damage. Later, at dinner with Emily Simpson and Jennifer Pedranti, I said, ‘The doctor thinks she has brain damage.’”
Vicki branded Tamra “tell-a-Tamra” and accused her of sharing private information with everyone. Tamra countered that Emily and Jennifer were the ones who carried the story further.
Regardless of how the information spread, Vicki argued that Tamra had no right to reveal it in the first place.
“Tamra knows a lot about my medical history, but it wasn’t her place to discuss my health,” Vicki said. “She misspoke, and she enjoys gossip. It was wrong. I didn’t appreciate her going around talking about brain lesions when she didn’t understand what had happened. The scan showed benign white dots. They weren’t anything serious, but she put me in a terrible position. I kept wondering what she gained from it. Was it just about being the gossip queen? It was completely wrong.”
Vicki also confirmed that she has undergone eight brain surgeries.
“I’m not someone who constantly worries, but I know my own health,” she explained. “When I had sepsis two years ago, was unconscious for 10 days and had only a 5 percent chance of surviving, that scared me after I woke up. I thought, ‘Oh my God, is this the end of my life?’”
She said she has a cholesteatoma, a growth inside the ear, and has had a mastoid cavity removed. Vicki also has a cochlear implant and a cadaver eardrum.
“Every three or four months, I have the cholesteatoma removed from the cavity,” she said. “It’s essentially a large opening in my head that doctors created so I wouldn’t need to have my head opened every three years. Now they can access it every few months and remove the tumors and cholesteatoma as they grow.”
“I’ve been through everything,” Vicki added. “I’ve had all the lymph nodes in my neck removed, and I’ve had more surgeries than I can remember. So am I worried? I just want to be healthy.”
Vicki later shared that, when she was 34, a large tumor broke through the wall of her brain.
“The surgery lasted 36 hours,” she recalled. “Doctors told my parents they weren’t sure I would ever be able to move my mouth and that I might lose vision on that side. When I woke up, the first thing I remember hearing was, ‘Please move your mouth, please move your mouth,’ and I could do it. My head was held in a large stand, and I was in a sling because I leaked spinal fluid for a long time. That eventually led to spinal meningitis. I’ve truly experienced it all.”
In another scene, after Heather Dubrow, 57, said she had “tried to connect [Vicki] with a neurologist,” Tamra again insisted that Vicki was fine.
“That’s why we never heard anything else about it,” Heather responded.
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 20 airs Thursdays at 8/7c on Bravo.