'The View' Co-Host Whoopi Goldberg Says She Recently Became Immobile and Struggled to Eat

By Lorri Wickenhauser July 11, 2023 at 12:40pm

While her co-hosts on “The View” were going on about their fabulous Fourth of July holidays, Whoopi Goldberg had a sobering story to share.

The five members of the ABC talk show returned from a summer break this week and took some time to talk about how they spent their holiday last week.

Most of the panel, including Sunny Hostin, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Sara Haines and Ana Navarro, one-upped each other with stories of parties and travel adventures.

But when it was Goldberg’s turn, she said she had spent much of the holiday basically incapacitated.

“I nursed my back,” Goldberg said, as her co-hosts made sympathetic comments.

“I was not very mobile,” she said. “People came to see me. People fed me. People took care of me, got me to the bathroom. You know, those are the things that are important.”

The 67-year-old comedian described a scene she dealt with during the ordeal: “You know, when you’re just trying to get to the bathroom, and it’s way over there, and you’re thinking, ‘aw, c’mon!'”

Hostin asked the obvious question: “How did it happen?”

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But Goldberg said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I did.”

“My back said, ‘Psst! Psst! Try to get up.'” She indicated she tried to do so but was unable.

“And my back was like, ‘Yeah. This is our message to you.'”

Navarro said she recently tried acupuncture for the first time after back problems surfaced while traveling. “I always thought that was the kookiest thing in the world … [but] it felt so great. Have you tried it?” she asked.

Goldberg said she had. “Yes, I’ve tried everything,” she said. “It is simply that my body is saying, ‘You’ve overdone, and you need to sit down.’

“I don’t sit down. I’m not a big sitter,” she explained. “I’m moving and doing stuff. But I got the message.

“Now, when my body does this, I stop.”

“It was really good for me,” she concluded.

It wasn’t Goldberg’s first experience with back problems. She spoke on the show in July 2021 about a recent hospitalization for sciatica, “which is basically a bulging disc in your back, and it impacts the sciatic nerve, which sends pain down your leg,” Self reported.

“I’m telling you, it’s like a bad boyfriend who came back to mess with me,” Goldberg said. “There I was, trying to move my leg, impossible to do. It was really horrible.”

During that health episode, she had to use a walker for a time, which she called “my new best friend.”

In 2015, she also missed a couple of weeks on “The View” when she was hospitalized for a herniated disc. She blamed that problem on “bad seating, when you’re not seated correctly,” among other things, ABC News reported. “There are a lot of things that can make this happen.”

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