Oprah’s health scare began on a regular Friday morning, when she suddenly felt some soreness in her neck while cooking breakfast. “The area under the left side of my chin felt tender,” she wrote.
“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,” she said. “I immediately Googled ‘swollen lymph gland causes.’ None of the results was good.”
She made an appointment with an internist for that afternoon and spent the entire time leading up to the visit expecting the worst. “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,” Oprah wrote. “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.'”
But all that Googling, Oprah said, left her in adamant disbelief that she could be healed with a regimen as simple as drinking water and sucking on lemons. In conclusion, Oprah wrote, she learned not only that trying to diagnose one’s symptoms on the internet can be wholly unhelpful, but also that she should be more thankful for her daily health.
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Photo Credit: Joe Seer / Shutterstock.com
