After a serious health scare last year, Madonna is feeling grateful for her good health. The singer reflected on the gravity of her health struggles while onstage during the first of her five sold-out Celebration World Tour shows at Los Angeles' Kia Forum.
The 65-year-old "Like a Virgin" performer opened up about the hospitalization that led to the cancellation of the initial North American leg of her Celebration tour. Madonna's health setback was due to a bacterial infection, and her hospital stay included a 48-hour medically induced coma.
"I didn't think I was going to make it, neither did my doctors. That's why I woke up with all of my children sitting around me," Madonna previously revealed to her fans of the traumatic event. "I forgot five days of my life – or my death. I don't really know where I was. If you want to know my secret and how I pulled through and how I survived, I thought, 'I've got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them.'"
During Monday night's show, Madonna thanked the doctor and medical personnel who were in the audience who helped her during and after the days she spent in an induced coma.
Per Variety, the singer began her nine-minute speech late in the show by telling her audience, "I have fallen off a lot of horses and broken a lot of bones. I have a titanium hip. I mean, the list goes on and on, but nothing can stop me... This summer I had a surprise. It's called a near-death experience."
Admitting that the experience was "pretty scary," she shared that her assistant told her, "the first word I said was 'No.' And I'm pretty sure that God was saying to me, 'Do you wanna come with us? You wanna come with me? You wanna go this way?' And I said, 'No. No.'" She added one more for emphasis: "No!"
Madonna went on to give a shout-out to Dr. David Agus, who helped guide her through the crisis. "He's put up with so many entertaining phone calls from me. When I was sick this summer and I literally couldn't walk from my bed to the toilet, I would call him every other day and ask him why I didn't have any energy. When was my energy gonna come back? When was I gonna feel myself again? When could I go back on tour again? When, when, when, when, when, when, when? And all he would say was, 'Go outside in the sun.'"
The star also thanked "everyone who's here that took care of me and listened to all of my endless complaining and need for predictions that I could not have. You are patient and you are kind, and you still are. You still help me take care of everybody I know that's sick. Thank you so much, wherever you are."
Thanking her children, several of whom joined her onstage during the show -- including Mercy James, 18, flawlessly rendering the opening notes to "Bad Girl," and David, 18, who played acoustic guitar on "Mother and Father" -- Madonna added, "My children are the ones that really helped me pull through, because they worked so hard and... I didn't want to let them down. So I just set a date and that date became a reality. And I didn't wanna disappoint my fans. I never do."
"I want to provocate. I wanna masturbate. But I don't want to disappoint my fans," she concluded.
The GRAMMY winner kicked off her long-awaited tour at London's O2 Arena in October 2023. The night was marked by poignant moments, including a tribute to the victims of the AIDS epidemic, displayed on the arena's giant screens as Madonna sang verses from her emotional ballad "In This Life." Her late friend, the artist Keith Haring, was remembered during a rendition of her 1986 hit, "Live to Tell."
Madonna is scheduled to tour through the end of April, when she will wrap her latest musical spectacle with five shows at Mexico City's Palacio De Los Deportes.
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