Madonna has revealed the first word she uttered after waking from a coma was "no" and she believes it was her way of telling God she didn't want to die.
Madonna opened up about her health crisis during a concert in California
The 65-year-old pop superstar was admitted to intensive care last June after she was struck down with a "serious bacterial infection" and she spent four days in a coma before waking up and she's now revealed the first thing she did when she regained consciousness was tell God she had no intention of leaving.
Speaking on stage during her gig at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, Madonna told the audience: "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.
"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 ... "
She added of her health crisis: "This summer I had a surprise. It’s called a near-death experience. 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' ... And I'm pretty sure God was saying to me, 'You want to come with us? You want to come with me? You want to go this way?' And I said, 'no, no'."
Madonna went on to recall a conversation with her manager, Guy Oseary while she was in the hospital after the illness threw plans for her 'Celebration' tour into doubt.
She shared: "[Guy] said, 'Well, when do you think you want to go back on tour?' I took the oxygen out of my nose. I looked at him, and I said, 'in two ... months!. I just said it. Sometimes you just have to say [stuff] put it out in the universe. And it happens."
Madonna also spoke about her battle to recover revealing the illness left her exhausted and struggling to walk. She added: "When I was sick this summer, and I literally couldn't walk from my bed to the toilet ... 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?'
"All he would say is, 'Go outside in the sun All he would say is, 'Go outside in the sun, you need vitamin D, and your kidneys will keep working'.
"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."
The pop superstar - who launched her world tour in London in October after previously postponing the start date due to her illness - went on to conclude: "It's a strange thing to finally not feel like I was in control, and that was my lesson: to let go. My children are what really helped me pull through because they worked so hard. I didn't want to let them down, so I just set a date [for the tour]. And that date became reality."
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