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Oprah Winfrey‘s recent battle with Pneumonia was so severe that she was forced to do something she has rarely done in her 30+year career: cancel all work commitments.
The media mogul recalled her health scare during an interview with Ellen DeGeneres on Monday’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where Winfrey said she fell ill after returning from a trip overseas, and required multiple trips to the doctor.
“I just got cleared yesterday!” Oprah tells Ellen of her health status. “I came back from overseas and I thought I had a cold, but it wasn’t a cold. I ended up in the emergency room and they said, ‘You have pneumonia.’ And I go home with pneumonia, and pneumonia is nothing to play with y’all; it is very serious.”
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Winfrey was on antibiotics for a week but they “weren’t working,” and a follow-up CT scan showed her condition had worsened. She was then treated by a lung specialist, THR reports.
“So I go into the lung specialist…. He puts his stethoscope here and I see the ‘Oh, sh*t’ face. It is like, ‘Oh my God, something’s wrong with you.’ And I can see it. He didn’t hide it.”
Winfrey went on to say that she typically doesn’t allow being ill to slow her down, but this time, her doctor advised her to “cancel everything” and abstain from flying for a month.
“And I went back in a week and I was better,” she continued. “He called me every day to make sure I was using the inhaler and taking the right antibiotics. And when I walked in and I was better, he thanked me three times for getting better and said, ‘Can I have a hug?’ And I could tell he was like, ‘Not on my watch is this going to happen.'”
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Winfrey intends to speak further about how the health scare “changed” her outlook on wellness during her “2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus” tour, which kicks off Jan. 4 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As theGrio previously reported, she is working in conjunction with Weight Watchers Reimagined to offer a full-day of wellness conversations during the nine-city tour.
