In an essay for O Magazine, Oprah Winfrey opened up about a recent health scare she experienced — one that left her nearly frantic. 

She first noticed all wasn’t well when she experienced soreness in her neck and saw that the left side of her chin had swelled up. She then Googled “swollen lymph gland causes,” which she now regrets. (Don’t we all?) 

“None of the results were good,” she explained. “For the next four hours, I thought the worst. 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.”

So she scheduled a doctor’s appointment. “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,” she 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.'”

She then called a second doctor, who gave her the same diagnosis. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “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. Drinking water and sucking on lemons couldn’t be the answer.”

“Our bodies are amazing,” she continued. “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. As they say, you don’t appreciate your health until you no longer have it.”

She added, “Wherever you are in your life’s journey — whatever the status of your career, your relationships, your finances, whether you’re successful or struggling, happy or not — I know for sure that you need look no further than your own body to offer a prayer of thanksgiving. Truly, you are a marvel.”