Madonna has been pictured strolling around New York City and visiting a fashion exhibition with friends just one day before she was ‘found unresponsive’ and had to be rushed to the ICU, where she was reportedly ‘intubated’ with a serious bacterial infection.
In exclusive images obtained by DailyMail.com, the 64-year-old singer is seen visiting the Karl Lagerfeld exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan with her assistant and one of her dancers – just hours before she is said to have ‘collapsed’.
Although Madonna appears relaxed and comfortable in the images – in which she is seen wearing an incognito ensemble of sweatpants, sneakers, sunglasses, and a baseball cap – sources today claimed to TMZ that the singer was ‘battling a low-grade fever for a month’ before her shock hospitalization.
According to the outlet, the pop icon ‘mostly ignored her symptoms and never got checked out by a doctor because she was laser focused on her upcoming tour’, which she has been forced to postpone as a result of her health struggles.
‘We’re told her doctors believe the unreported fever was a sign of the infection, which worsened because it was left untreated,’ TMZ claims, adding that the singer’s medical team – as well as ‘those around her’ are concerned that she will ‘go against doctors’ orders and push to start her tour ASAP’.
Madonna has been pictured strolling around New York City and visiting a fashion exhibition with friends just one day before she was ‘found unresponsive’ and had to be rushed to the ICU
In exclusive images obtained by DailyMail.com, the 64-year-old singer is seen visiting the Karl Lagerfeld exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum with her assistant and one of her dancer
Madonna has certainly been following a rigorous rehearsal schedule in the lead-up to her tour, with her former back-up dancer, Jose Xtravaganza, telling DailyMail.com that the mother-of-six has been rehearsing for six days a week for months in order to ensure that every element of the Celebration shows are perfect.
‘Rehearsals are six days a week from what I hear… the only day off is Sunday,’ Jose – who choreographed Madonna’s iconic Vogue music video – said.
‘I think it’s gonna be a great show, full of costume. There’s a lot of dancing going on. The dance troupe is large. When we went on tour, it was just seven of us. I think now there’s, there’s at least anywhere from 15 to 20 of them.
‘They are trained in different fields of dance different types of artistic expression to be to be shown in the show. I believe there’s gonna be like a lot of martial arts like boxing. She’s very into boxing and things like that. So I think she’s going to revisit a lot of those things that she’s shown in the past. It’s definitely not to be missed.’
In April, an insider revealed to DailyMail.com that Madonna had been ‘driving everyone up the wall with her perfectionism’ in the lead-up to the hotly-anticipated tour, saying: ‘It may be her last tour, so she wants to make it perfect. She is incredible shape and her body is sick.
‘This is her labor of love. Her perfectionism is driving everyone up the wall but she does not care. The crew is working their a** off because everyone wants to make her happy.
‘She has no issues whatsoever with firing someone at the drop of a hat.’
Madonna has yet to publicly comment on her hospitalization – which was revealed to the world by her longtime manager Guy Oseary in an Instagram post on Wednesday.
According to TMZ, Madonna (seen on June 20) was ‘battling a low-grade fever for a month’ before she was hospitalized on Saturday
The outlet claims that the singer’s doctors ‘believe the unreported fever was a sign of the infection, which worsened because it was left untreated’
In a statement shared on his own account, Oseary – who has been working with the singer for years – confirmed that she had been diagnosed with a ‘serious bacterial infection’ and that she had been taken to the ICU for treatment.
‘On Saturday, June 24, Madonna developed a serious bacterial infection which led to a several-day stay in the ICU,’ he wrote.
‘Her health is improving, however she is still under medical care. A full recovery is expected.’
Madonna then returned home on Thursday, with sources reporting that she is ‘feeling better’ – however it remains unclear when her 35-city tour will now kick off, having been slated to start on July 15 in Vancouver.
Although she seems to now be on the mend, a family member admitted to DailyMail.com on Wednesday that Madonna’s family had been ‘preparing for the worst’ amid her hospitalization and were unsure if she was going to pull through.
‘For the past couple of days, no one really knew which direction this was going to turn, and her family was preparing for the worst,’ the relative said.
‘That is why it was kept a secret since Saturday. Everyone believed that we may lose her and that has been the reality of the situation.’
Sources also revealed to DailyMail.com that Madonna’s management team held a crisis meeting on Zoom one day after she was hospitalized amid fears that she was not going to survive.
The pop icon’s manager Guy Oseary confirmed the news in an Instagram post on Wednesday, revealing that the star was still ‘under medical care’
It was during this meeting that the group – many of whom had worked with Madonna for several decades – took the decision to postpone her highly-anticipated 40th anniversary tour and shortly afterwards the plans were put in motion.
One source said: ‘The simple fact is that nobody knew at this point how it was going to all end. Madonna was very ill and in these situations there are always fears for the worst.
‘Realizing that someone is in intensive care is scary so there was a lot of worry and upset, these people had been her close friends for some time. But they had to be fair on fans, and with the tour getting even closer they took the decision to postpone pretty much immediately, so plans were put in motion.
‘Even if she was to recover quickly, she would be very behind in her rehearsing schedule and nobody wanted to put her under any pressure.’
Madonna is mother to six children: Lourdes, 26; Rocco, 22; David, 17; Mercy, 17; and 10-year-old twins Stella and Estere.
She posts frequent tributes to her 92-year-old father, Silvio Ciccone, and is close to several of her siblings.
Madonna has three sisters – Paula, Melanie and Jennifer – and four brothers: Anthony, Martin, Christopher and Mario.
Anthony died in February from throat cancer and respiratory failure, aged 66.
The Ciccone siblings all keep a low profile, leaving the limelight to their megastar relation.
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