Madonna is revealing more about her near-death health scare

By Marianne Garvey, CNN

(CNN) — Madonna is talking about how serious her health emergency was last summer.

She told the crowd at the opening of a five-night run for “The Celebration Tour” in Los Angeles that her doctor, Dr. David Agus, and more of her medical team were in the audience.

“It was a strange thing to finally not feel like I was in control,” she said of the bacterial infection that landed her in the ICU last July.

According to video shared of her remarks, Madonna continued, saying, “I have fallen off a lot of horses and broken a lot of bones. I have a titanium hip. I mean, the list goes on and on, but nothing can stop me.”

Madonna, who has spoken about her recovery at times during previous tour performances, described her medical scare as a “near-death experience.”

“I’m not kidding. 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.’ Anyway, that’s what my assistant tells me.”

She added, “I’m pretty sure that God was saying to me, ‘Do you wanna come with us? You wanna come with me? You wanna go this way?’ And I said, ‘No. No. No!”

She called Dr. Agus “a very special man in the audience tonight.”

“He’s put up with so many entertaining phone calls from me. When I was sick this summer and I literally couldn’t walk from my bed to the toilet, I would call him every other day and ask him why I didn’t have any energy,” she said. “When was my energy gonna come back? When was I gonna feel myself again? When could I go back on tour again? When, when, when, when, when, when, when? And all he would say was, ‘Go outside in the sun.’”

When she replied that her pristine skin was a result of staying out of the sun, Dr. Agus explained, “Go outside in the sun. You need vitamin D so your kidneys will keep working.”

“And I hate the sun, but I did it anyways, and it was so hard for me to walk from my house to the backyard and sit in the sun,” Madonna said. “I know that sounds insane, but it was difficult, and I didn’t know when I could get up again and when I could be myself again and when I would have my energy back. It was a strange thing to finally not feel like I was in control. And that was my lesson to let go.”

She concluded with a thanks to “everyone who’s here that took care of me and listened to all of my endless complaining and need for predictions that I could not have. You are patient and you are kind, and you still are. You still help me take care of everybody I know that’s sick. Thank you so much, wherever you are.”

And finally with a thanks to her children, who “really helped me pull through, because they worked so hard and… I didn’t want to let them down.”

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