Gizelle Bryant opened up like never before during Part 2 of The Real Housewives of Potomac Season 7 reunion as she shared the emotional story of her hysterectomy. 

“It was highly traumatic,” Gizelle recalled. “It was supposed to be, like, a three-and-a-half-hour surgery, it ended up being eight and a half hours.”

Naturally, her three daughters — Grace, Adore, and Angel — “were freaked out,” Gizelle said. “It wasn’t good.”

She hesitated to continue, telling host Andy Cohen that they could “talk about it later” as she began to tear up, but with some encouragement, she resumed the story. “My sister was with me, she was getting updates every hour. And then they stopped updating her. So for hours, I was in surgery and there was no update, so my kids were terrified.”

To this day, Gizelle added, “They still don’t even want to talk about it.”

“They’re like, ‘We didn’t think that you were gonna come home,’” she shared. “I told them I’m not spending the night at the hospital, but because the surgery was so long, I had to spend the night. My bladder was compromised. I had a catheter, all that. It was bad. I didn’t come home. My kids were done.”

Thankfully, everything turned out OK, and on top of that, Gizelle expressed that she’s ultimately glad she had the surgery.

Being vulnerable and open about her experience has had its benefits too. Reflecting on the audience’s reaction to her sharing her health struggles throughout RHOP Season 7, she said, “That was probably, out of seven seasons, the biggest feedback I’ve ever gotten,” especially from “women who are going through it and who could sympathize [and] empathize.”

One particularly emotional moment from this season came when Gizelle called Robyn Dixon to deliver the news that she needed surgery. “My doctors have been monitoring me for about three years, and my uterus fibroids are so huge that they can’t just remove the fibroids,” Gizelle explained. “They’ve got to also remove my uterus, which is just like a full-blown hysterectomy.”

“The act of doing it is terrifying,” she said, going on to share some of the things she was the most nervous about. “I don’t know, but there’s no way around it.”

Making the discovery all the more difficult was the fact that Gizelle was, at the time, her own source of comfort. As she told Robyn, “I was holding my own hands. I was consoling myself.”

However, it’s safe to say her friends and family have rallied around her in the months since.

Watch The Real Housewives of Potomac on Bravo Sundays at 8/7c and next day on Peacock. Catch up on the Bravo app.