Aretha Has 'Miraculous' Recovery to Mystery Illness

No one knows what was wrong with Aretha Franklin recently, but whatever it was, she's currently experiencing a "miraculous" recovery from it, she tells the AP. Health problems have forced Franklin to cancel concerts and appearances over the past few months, including one just this past weekend, but she won't say what exactly the problem is. "I'm not one to go into my personal health things," she says. But she will say this: "My treatments are going very well. My last CAT scan, my doctor at the CAT scan and everyone who sees this says that this is miraculous, absolutely miraculous."

"I was talking to Smokey Robinson, my oldest best friend Smokey, talking about the fact that some doctors are not very well acquainted with faith healing," she continues. "And Smokey said, 'Well, they just don't know who your healer is.'" She offers up a few hints about her condition: It's common to women, and partly related to a previous health concern (which she was also cagey about). Whatever's going on with her is apparently keeping her from next week's US Open tennis championships, which is a bummer, because she says was planning to wear a "hot, hot, hot three-piece Escada short set ... with some fine platforms, but doggone it, I'm just not up to traveling quite as far as New York." (More Aretha Franklin stories.)