Oprah Winfrey was hospitalized with pneumonia, recommends the flu shot
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Oprah is gearing up for a busy next year. She’s partnering with WW and is going to travel to nine cities across the country as part of her Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus tour. She’s going to talk about her own “wellness journey,” and will help attendees plan and embark on their own. She’s also going to invite celebrities and special guests to join her. I always think of Oprah as one of those people who is always on and has an endless amount of creative energy, but recently, she had a scary bout of pneumonia, and her situation was grim. Good Morning America has more:
The media mogul told Ellen DeGeneres Monday that she was “cleared yesterday” after battling pneumonia for several weeks.
Winfrey said she thought she had a cold, but later went to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia.
“Pneumonia is nothing to play with, y’all. It is very serious,” she said, adding that eventually she was referred to a lung specialist. “He puts his stethoscope here and I see the ‘Oh s–t’ face. It was like, ‘Oh my God, something’s wrong with you.’ And I can see it. He didn’t hide it.”
“He immediately said, ‘You must cancel everything.’ I’ve never canceled anything in my life,” she continued. “He’s like, ‘You must cancel everything. You can’t fly for a month.'”
Fortunately, after a week on antibiotics, Oprah’s health improved:
“[My lung specialist] called me everyday to make sure I was using the inhalers and taking the right antibiotics,” she marveled. “When I walked in and I was better, he thanked me three times for getting better and said, ‘Can I have a hug?’… I could tell he was like, ‘Not on my watch is this gonna happen!'”
That’s incredibly scary. Thank goodness the antibiotics worked. The doctor seems relieved, too. I can’t imagine the pressure that doctors face when they are dealing with patients whose health is precarious, never mind the extra layer of, “Oh, sh-t. I’m treating OPRAH. She has to get better!” (The article notes that there are two kinds of pneumonia: viral and bacterial, and that Oprah probably had the latter, since she was on antibiotics.) Viral pneumonia can be caused by the flu, and Oprah wants us to get our flu shots. Celebitchy reminded me that Savannah Guthrie also had pneumonia and also had a terrible experience. Whoopi Goldberg was in a near-death situation after getting hospitalized with pneumonia and sepsis earlier this year. I was already planning on getting my flu shot in a few weeks, and this is a great reminder to not put it off, as it has the potential to lessen the effects of the flu and also lessen the likelihood that I’ll get viral pneumonia. I don’t have time to get sick!
Here’s that segment of Oprah’s interview on Ellen.
Also Oprah is relaunching her book club!
