Dr. Jackie Walters has apologized and admitted that she made a mistake by speaking publicly about Married to Medicine star Buffie Purselle’s fertility issues.
Purselle has been struggling for a long time to get pregnant. She and her husband Dr. David Purselle announced during the recent filming of the show’s Season 7 reunion that they were trying surrogacy after Buffie had six miscarriages.
“We’re so excited to become parents,” Buffie said, according to PEOPLE. “A family is something that we have both desperately wanted for so long now. We made our decision and we couldn’t be happier!”
Buffie and her husband explained that they were using a surrogacy service that a family member recommended and that that they were planning to use their five embryos.
“We have five embryos from years ago, three boys and two girls,” Buffie said.
But before Buffie and her husband were able to announce their plan, Jackie declared during her book cover reveal party on the November 17 episode of the show that Buffie was “infertile.”
“Fourteen years ago, I got breast cancer. Six months of chemo and eight weeks of radiation to find out the thing we grow up most of us wanting to do, you can’t do,” Jackie told her audience.“Buffie, you can relate. You’re infertile.”
Buffie was hurt about Jackie’s comment.
“I’ve had really surface-level discussions with Jackie about my challenges with fertility,” she told Bravo’s The Daily Dish. “Nothing real deep. So I just don’t understand why she thinks it’s OK for her to tell my business to a group of strangers.”
Buffie took to Instagram to express her hurt.
“This was one of the most humiliating and painful moments in my life,” she said. “I am proud that I was able to rise above my pain and embarrassment and conduct myself as the lady that my Mother and Grandmother raised me to be.”
Buffie’s long struggle to conceive has been the subject of previous episodes of the show. She once admitted that she has spent about $200,000 trying to get pregnant.
She said she used various means, from the natural “good-old-fashioned fun way” to various medical procedures, including in-vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemination. She got pregnant six times but it all ended in miscarriage.
Dr. Jackie on Married to Medicine is wrong for what she did to Buffie and Mariah. I don't like this person.
— KimmiW (@KimmiW4) November 25, 2019
I’m ready for married to medicine cause i wanna know why tf Jackie go off on Buffie when she’s the one who told a room full of strangers her business.
— $helwood (@kay_are_es) November 25, 2019
So I’m finally getting around to watching Married to Medicine, Jackie is dead wrong for getting in front of all these ppl and telling Buffie business, you barely know this woman and you didn’t even ask her if you could talk about it #marriedtomedicine
— Shirley Chambers (@JAhunni_24) November 18, 2019
Jackie has since apologized and said that she regrets what she said, according to The Daily Dish.
“I hate that it happened. You know, if I could definitely take it back and do it all over again, because I really was not aware what Buffie wanted to share,” she said. “I can certainly say it isn’t my place to share.”
“I would not have shared something like that had I thought it was not OK with her,” she added. ” You know, I am sorry. I should have asked her, and I hate that [it hurt her]. That is what definitely bothers me the most.”
Married to Medicine airs on Sundays at 9/8c on Bravo TV.