Madonna is reflecting on the “near-death experience” she suffered last summer when an infection forced the pop icon into a 48-hour medically induced coma, and how the first words she said upon waking were a declaration of her will to live.
The “Like a Prayer” singer, 65, told the Celebration Tour audience at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum on Monday night about her experience after a bacterial infection landed her in the ICU in June, Variety reports.
“This summer, I had a surprise. It’s called … a near-death experience,” said Madonna, whose tour was postponed as a result of her illness. “It was pretty scary. Obviously, I didn’t know for four days, because I was in an induced coma. But when I woke up, the first word I said was, ‘No.’ Anyway, that’s what my assistant tells me.”
The “Live to Tell” singer said she’s “pretty sure that God was saying to me, ‘Do you wanna come with us? … You wanna go this way?’ And I said, ‘No. No. No!'”
She called out “a very special man in the audience” in a nod to physician Dr. David Agus, whom she said “put up with so many entertaining phone calls from me” about the timeline of her recovery.
While it was “strange” for Madonna “to finally not feel like I was in control,” she now feels it was a “lesson to let go.”
Madonna ultimately began the tour in October with four shows in London, before her December debut of the North American leg in Brooklyn.
She credits her children, three of whom performed Monday, as “the ones that really helped pull me through, because they worked so hard and… I didn’t want to let them down.”
