Oprah Winfrey says she’s “grateful” for her ever-changing body after experiencing a health scare.
In the November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, the media mogul opened up about a scary moment she experienced on what she thought was an ordinary Friday morning.
“Standing at the stove, stirring scrambled eggs in a skillet, I turned to get a pinch of salt and noticed a bit of soreness in my neck,” she explained. “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.”
She added, “I immediately Googled “swollen lymph gland causes.” None of the results was good… For the next four hours, I thought the worst.”
And when she was finally able to see the doctor, Winfrey was not feeling optimistic. “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.”
But when the doctor gave Winfrey, 64, her diagnosis, she had cause to be relieved: “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 continued: “I couldn’t believe it. 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.”
And now, she’s thanking her 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 concludes by writing, “As they say, you don’t appreciate your health until you no longer have it.”
Read more from Winfrey here.
