Madonna celebrates one year since surviving a near-fatal illness

Madonna celebrated the first anniversary of overcoming a life-threatening illness on July 4th and looked back on her “miraculous recovery” from a serious infection that left her hospitalized on Instagram.

“Happy 4th of July! One year ago today I was just out of the hospital after a life-threatening illness and could barely stand in my yard with a sparkler in my hand,” the singer wrote on Friday. “I made a miraculous recovery and had an amazing year. Thank you God. Life is beautiful!”

Madonna was in intensive care for several days in late June 2023 because she had “a severe bacterial infection,” according to her manager Guy Oseary. She was placed in an induced coma for four days, which interrupted her Celebration tour for several months until last October.

“It’s called a near-death experience, and I’m not kidding, it was pretty scary,” the singer told a crowd of fans during a concert in Los Angeles last March. “Of course, 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.’ At least that’s what my assistant told me.”

“I’m pretty sure God said to me, ‘Do you want to come? Do you want to come with us, do you want to walk this path?'” she told the crowd. “And I said, ‘No!'”

Since the health scare, Madonna has faced several lawsuits related to her Celebration tour. Concertgoers at several shows sued her and promoter Live Nation in recent months over delayed start times. The plaintiffs claimed she began hours after the announced start time, which they said was false advertising. The first lawsuit, filed by two attendees of her Brooklyn show, was dismissed last month.