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Nobody tells Madonna what to do — even when she's unconscious.
The pop icon kicked off her run of sold-out Celebration World Tour shows in Los Angeles by sharing a story about waking up from a four-day coma last year, per People. Madonna was hospitalized in June 2023 with a bacterial infection after a friend found her unresponsive in her bathroom.
While talking about what she called her "near-death experience," she revealed the very first word she said when she woke up from an induced coma, and it is very fitting for the groundbreaking musician: "No."
"I'm pretty sure that was God saying to me, 'Do you want to come? Want to come up with me? No,'" she told the crowd, causing many fans in the audience to laugh.
The "Material Girl" singer also recalled speaking with her longtime manager, Guy Oseary, while she was still in the hospital, and telling him she was determined to get back to touring "in two f------ months," adding that "sometimes you just have to say s--- [and] put it out in the universe. And it happens."
One of the doctors who helped her during her ordeal was even in attendance at the show, and she made sure to give him a special shoutout.
"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 said. "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."
Since her health scare, Madonna has learned how to slow down, saying, "It's a strange thing to finally not feel like I was in control, and that was my lesson: to let go." Despite her medical struggles, Madonna shared that her tour has more of an impact on her emotional state rather than an affect on her physically.
"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," she said. "I've fallen off a lot of horses and broken a lot of bones ... but nothing can stop me."