Madonna faced her mortality head on during a reflective moment of her first Celebration Tour show in Los Angeles on Monday night.
The 65-year-old music icon paused her performance at the Kia Forum to look back on her shocking health scare in June of 2023, when she was rushed to a hospital after being found unresponsive as the result of what was later determined to be a serious bacterial infection.
The songstress was taken to the ICU and had to be intubated, and she later revealed that she was put into a medically induced coma as she battled for her life despite going into lung and kidney failure.
Despite her ‘near-death’ experience, Madonna remained defiant.
‘This show every night is not really so hard on me physically. It’s hard on me emotionally because I’m really telling you the story of my life,’ she told the audience, according to Just Jared. ‘My heart is on my sleeve. I’ve fallen off a lot of horses and broken a lot of bones… but nothing can stop me.’
Madonna, 65, said ‘nothing can stop me’ at the Kia Forum in LA on Monday as she recalled her ‘near-death’ health scare when she was rushed to the ICU and intubated in June 2023 after suffering a deadly bacterial infection; pictured in October in London
Madonna was performing the first LA stop of her Celebration Tour. She said the first word she spoke after awaking from an induced coma was ‘No!’
Madonna went on to reveal the first word she allegedly said after waking from her four-day coma: ‘No!’
‘I’m pretty sure that was God saying to me, “Do you want to come? Want to come up with me?”‘ To which she replied, ‘No!’
The Into The Groove singer revealed that one of the doctors who had cared for her during her health scare was in the audience that night, and she recalled how he coached her through her difficult recovery period after she was discharged from the hospital.
‘I would call in every other day and ask [my doctor] why I didn’t have any energy, when was my energy going to come back? When was I going to feel like myself again? When can I go on tour again?’ she recalled.
‘All he would say is, “Go outside in the sun” … It was so hard for me to walk from my house to the backyard and sit in the sun. I know that sounds insane, but it was difficult,’ she admitted. ‘It’s a strange thing to finally not feel like I was in control, and that was my lesson… to let go.’
The singer (born Madonna Ciccone) credited her six kids with helping to get her back on her feet and in front of adoring audiences again.
‘My children are what really helped me pull through because they worked so hard,’ she shared. ‘I didn’t want to let them down, so I just set a date. And that date became reality.’
During a previous tour date in Brooklyn in December, the dance music pioneer joked that she had to ‘almost die to get all my kids in one room.’
She shares 27-year-old daughter Lourdes with her former boyfriend and fitness trainer Carlos Leon and her 23-year-old son Rocco with her ex-husband, filmmaker Guy Ritchie.
Madonna later adopted her son David Banda, 18; daughter Chifundo ‘Mercy’ James, 18; and twin daughters Stella and Estere, 11.
‘I’m pretty sure that was God saying to me, “Do you want to come? Want to come up with me?”‘ To which she replied, ‘No!’; pictured Monday in LA with the comedian Eric André (L)
She revealed a doctor who treated her was at Monday’s show. She said she would call him to ask when she would finally have more energy as she recovered, but he would tell her to just ‘Go outside in the sun’; seen Monday in LA
She thanked her children for helping to speed up her recovery; pictured in London in October
Later on Tuesday, Madonna shared some on-stage photos from her Monday night show to Instagram
‘Last night was… Unforgettable,’ she wrote, while revealing that the comedian Eric André had joined her on stage, where her proceeded to moon the audience
‘Thank you,’ she wrote while tagging the comedian and actor.She appeared with curly blond pin-up hair, a black bustier and fishnets with pointy silver heels as she sat next to him while apparently judging some kind of contest with score cards
The concert turned out to be a family affair, as Madonna was joined by her daughter Estere (L) and son David (R)
She suffered an acute septic shock on June 24, according to Radar Online, and emergency responders were reportedly able to revive her with Narcan.
The substance is traditionally used to treat people in the midst of opioid overdoses, but it can also help revive someone suffering from septic shock.
At her Brooklyn show, Madonna said her ‘lungs weren’t working’ and her ‘kidneys were failing,’ and she claimed there was a 40 percent chance that she would not survive.
However, she was on the road to recovery just a few days after being rushed to the hospital, and the pop icon seems to be doing as well as ever now.