This is an archived article and the information in the story may be outdated. Please check the time stamp on the story to see when it was updated last.
There’s no star more influential and empowering than Oprah Winfrey. The famous talk show host and unofficial life guru always has something inspiring to say, even when she’s facing turmoil of her own. Winfrey opened up about a recent health scare her “What I Know For Sure” column in the November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, where she recalls a scary situation and how it impacted her outlook on life.
Winfrey says the incident happened on an “ordinary Friday morning” while she was making breakfast. She “turned to get a pinch of salt and noticed a bit of soreness in my neck. The area under the left side of my chin felt tender. In the mirror, I could see it was swollen. By the time I finished making breakfast, the swelling had increased. It looked like a goiter that had come out of nowhere. I immediately Googled 'swollen lymph gland causes.' None of the results was good."
She made an appointment with an internist that same day, anxiously waiting and worrying about the possible outcomes of her consultation.
"For the next four hours, I thought the worst," she writes. "Why would a neck suddenly swell? Maybe it wasn't sudden. Maybe whatever it was had been growing for days, or longer, and I only now noticed. What had I eaten? Could it be the remnant of a cold?”
Thankfully, it was just a health scare and nothing serious. “When I finally opened my mouth to say 'ahhh,' I was prepared for the doctor to say, 'I'm so sorry, Ms. Winfrey, you have [insert terrible disease].'" The reality was less severe than she anticipated. "What she actually said was, 'I think your salivary glands are blocked. Go home, drink plenty of water, and try sucking on some lemons to stimulate your salivary ducts.'"
Winfrey did as instructed by her doctor and noticed a profound difference in the swelling. “By the next day, the swelling had gone down measurably. In two days, it had all but disappeared,” she continues. But despite the good news, Winfrey still couldn’t shake her initial feelings of panic and distress, saying that she wasn’t aware of how something of this nature could “disrupt your whole system."
"I'd worked myself up to a blood pressure reading of 150/80 thinking about how I was going to rearrange my life to deal with whatever this was,” she explains.
Winfrey knows that her situation could have ended with a more serious outcome and is using her health scare to remind everyone to be thankful for their bodies—noting that most people take their good health for granted and aren’t conscious of “all the wonders” of the human body.
“Our bodies are amazing. And too often we are not grateful for their perfect functioning, balancing bacteria and enzymes, managing blood flow, thrumming the sinus rhythm beat, beat, beat of our hearts day in, day out,” she says. “As they say, you don't appreciate your health until you no longer have it.”
We’re glad to hear that Oprah is okay and in good health! Let us know your thoughts on Oprah’s health scare in the comments below!
