Madonna Thanks ‘Very Important’ Friend Who ‘Saved My Life’ Amid Health Scare

Madonna opened up about her health scare over the summer that led to the Queen of Pop being induced into a coma for 48 hours in the ICU.

“The fact that I’m here right now is the f—ing miracle,” Madonna told the crowd at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Saturday night (Dec. 16) amid her Celebration tour, as seen in a video shared by a fan to X (formerly known as Twitter). “There’s very people in the room tonight who were with me in the hospital.”

The “Material Girl” superstar went on to thank a “very important woman,” named Shavawn, who “dragged” her to the hospital after she “passed out on my bathroom floor and woke up in the ICU.” Madonna added that Shavawn “saved my life.”

Madonna also shouted out her Kabbalah teacher, Eitan Yardeni, who was also in the audience and stayed by her side throughout her induced coma for two days. “The only voice I heard was his,” she recalled.

“A couple of things I thought about when I first became conscious and saw my six incredible children around me,” she continued, before joking, “By the way, I had to almost die to get all my kids in one room.”

Madonna noted, “And I was thinking, ‘What if I left my children?’ That would destroy me to leave my children at this moment in their lives. I wasn’t thinking about me. I was thinking about them, and I was thinking about my mother and how scared she must have been to know that she was going to leave us all behind.”

“I don’t take any of this s— for granted,” she concluded. Madonna is mom to Lourdes Leon, 26, Rocco Ritchie, 23, David Banda, 18, Chifundo “Mercy” James, 17, and twins Stella and Estere, 11.

In June, Madonna spent several days in the hospital due to a bacterial infection. The hospitalization has forced the star to put her massive, career-spanning Celebration tour on pause, though the rescheduled dates are now underway.

Madonna released her first statement after her hospitalization in July, thanking fans for their positive energy and assuring that she’s feeling better. “I have felt your love. I’m on the road to recovery and incredibly grateful for all the blessings in my life,” wrote the singer.

Rania Aniftos

Billboard