By Mark Gray
3:00pm PST, Dec 19, 2023
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While addressing a concert crowd in December 2023, Madonna thanked a friend named Shavawn for "dragging" her to the hospital.
"I don't even remember. I passed out on my bathroom floor. I woke up in the ICU," she said. "Thank you, Shavawn. She saved my life."
Madonna went on to say she was in "an induced coma for 48 hours" but she could still hear her Kabbalah teacher. "The only voice I heard was his. I heard him say, 'Squeeze my hand,'" she said.
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Initial reports claimed Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon was by her mom's side throughout the medical incident. It turns out that all six of her children were in her hospital room when she came to.
"There were a couple of things I thought about when I first became conscious and I saw my six incredible children sitting around me," she said, referring to Lourdes, 27, Rocco, 23, David, 18, Mercy, 17, and 11-year-old twins Estere and Stella. Madonna then quipped, "By the way, I had to almost die to get all my kids in one room."
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There was speculation that Madonna, 65, was pushing herself too hard before her medical incident.
A source told Page Six that the pop legend had been "putting in 12-hour days" for weeks while rehearsing at Long Island's rarely used Nassau Coliseum.
Sources close to the singer said she'd been eyeing the successful tours of Taylor Swift and Pink and was hoping to compete. "She is the one constantly pushing herself, but she has to realize that, while she is as good as the people she is working with, many of them are a fraction of her age and without her history of injuries," a pal told Page Six. "Of course, there are other acts older than her still on the road, but they aren't dancing and performing like she does."
