Hailey Bieber has taken to social media to share a candid health update alongside a photo of her swollen stomach.
The 26-year-old Rhode skincare founder posted a photo to her Instagram Story on Monday (November 29), with her shirt lifted over her stomach, and explained that she's not pregnant, but instead has a large ovarian cyst.
"I have a cyst on my ovary the size of an apple," she wrote. "I don't have endometriosis or PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) but I have gotten an ovarian cyst a few times and it's never fun."
According to Mayo Clinic, Ovarian cysts are sacs filled with fluid that attach to or inside an ovary. Though most cysts resolve themselves without surgical treatment, a ruptured cyst can cause grave health concerns.
The model, who has been celebrating her recent birthday in Japan with her husband Justin Bieber, added that it was "not a baby" - denying the ongoing pregnancy rumors that have followed her since the couple tied the knot in 2018.
While she didn't provide any further information about her cyst, she did explain that it makes her achy and "feel nauseous and bloated and crampy and emotional".
Bieber then concluded her post by writing: "Anyways… I'm sure a lot of you can overly relate and understand," adding, "We got this."
The star's latest health scare comes months after she revealed that she experienced "stroke-like symptoms" from a "very small blood clot" in March.
In April, Bieber released a YouTube video titled "telling my story", where she shared more details about the moment she realized she had a "hole in [her] heart".
She began the video by saying that the day of her health emergency started normally, having breakfast with her 28-year-old husband, before feeling a "really weird sensation that traveled down my arm from my shoulder all the way down to my fingertips".
"The right side of my face started drooping. I couldn't get a sentence out," she recalled. "Immediately, I thought I was having a stroke, like a full-blown stroke. Definitely the scariest moment of my life."
After going to the hospital, Bieber was told by medical experts that she experienced a transient ischemic attack (TIA) which she described as "like having a mini-stroke" - and can be both a warning of a future stroke and an opportunity to prevent one from happening, per Mayo Clinic.
Though strokes and TIAs have similar symptoms, TIAs usually last a few minutes and don't cause permanent damage. So, although the businesswoman felt back to normal, doctors kept her overnight in the emergency room and "did a ton of tests".
After she was discharged, she underwent more follow-up testing at UCLA, where doctors discovered she had "a patent foramen ovale (PFO)" which is a hole between "the right and left chambers" of her heart.
Bieber revealed in the video that she had a "grade five PFO" which is "fairly large," therefore, she had to have a procedure to close the hole in her heart. She now takes aspirin and a blood thinner regularly.
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