Madonna debuted her long-awaited Celebration tour in London over the weekend, months after she was hospitalized.
The Queen of Pop had been forced to postpone her international tour for three months while she recovered from a “serious bacterial infection” that landed her in the intensive care unit in late June.
During Saturday’s opening show at the O2 Arena in front of a crowd of 20,000 fans, she gave a candid update on the time during her illness. “I didn’t think I would make it — and neither did my doctors,” Madonna said onstage, according to NME. “That’s why I woke up with all of my children sitting around me.”
I forgot five days of my life, or my death, I don’t really know where I was,” she continued. “But the angels were protecting me. And my children were there. And my children always save me, every time.
“If you want to know how I pulled through and how I survived, I thought, ‘I have got to be there for my children — I have to survive for them.’”
The “Material Girl” singer then launched into a cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and the “Evita” ballad “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” which featured a montage of late icons, such as civil rights leaders Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., communist revolutionary Che Guevara and pop stars David Bowie and Sinéad O’Connor
Madonna had previously shared her grim prognosis about one month after her hospital stay in an Instagram post, in which she said she was “lucky” to be alive.
She then gave thanks to her six children for helping her survive: “As a Mother you can really get caught up In the needs Of your children and the seemingly endless giving……….. But when the chips were down my children really showed up for me. I saw a side to them I had never seen before. It made all the difference. So did the love and support from my friends.”
Madonna has six children: daughter Lourdes, 27, whose father is personal trainer and actor Carlos Leon; son Rocco, 23, from her marriage to Guy Ritchie; and four adopted children: son David, 18; daughter Mercy James, 17; and twin girls Stella and Estere, 11.
