Sir Elton John’s emotional prayers as he lay 24 hours from death with infection

Elton’s prayers as he lay 24 hours from death with infection – as revealed in his sensational memoir

Sir Elton John today reveals how a major infection following surgery for prostate cancer left him ’24 hours from death’.

The singer, who was in intensive care for two days after suffering complications, said he came round in hospital and prayed: ‘Please don’t let me die – please let me see my kids again.’

In a must-read memoir serialised from today in the Daily Mail, Sir Elton, 72, currently on his farewell tour, also lifts the lid on extraordinary episodes from his life including:

• How Hollywood stars Sylvester Stallone and Richard Gere almost had a ‘fist fight’ over Princess Diana at a dinner party at his house until his husband David Furnish stopped them;

• How he fell out with Diana after she pulled out of writing the foreword to a book for his Aids Foundation – but they later made up on the day fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered;

• His fears about singing the ‘inappropriate’ original lyrics to Candle In the Wind about Marilyn Monroe being found dead naked by mistake at Diana’s funeral.

Sir Elton’s brush with death came after surgery for prostate cancer in Los Angeles in 2017. Ten days later, while performing in Las Vegas, the singer started to suffer pain. Doctors discovered it was a rare complication from the operation in which fluid was leaking from his lymph nodes.

For the next two-and-a-half months, the star was forced to go back to hospital to deal with the agonising problem – before doctors cured it by accident.

‘A routine colonoscopy shifted the fluid permanently, days before my 70th birthday,’ said Sir Elton.

He thought everything was back to normal. But soon after, while on tour in South America, he started feeling ill and ‘couldn’t stop shaking’. Cutting the tour short, the star returned to the UK and was rushed to hospital after ‘feeling worse than I ever had in my life’.

‘I was taken to King Edward VII’s Hospital in London, where I had a scan,’ he said. ‘I was told that my condition was so serious, the hospital didn’t have the equipment to cope with it.

‘I had to be moved to the London Clinic. My last memory is of hyperventilating while they were trying to find a vein to give me an injection… By 2.30pm, I was on the operating table, having more lymphatic fluid drained – this time from my diaphragm.

‘For two days afterwards, I was in intensive care. When I came round, they told me I’d contracted a major infection in South America, and that they were treating it with massive intravenous doses of antibiotics. But the fever came back. They took a sample of the infection… it was much more serious than they’d first realised.

‘There were MRI scans and God knows how many other procedures. The doctors told David I was 24 hours away from death. If the South American tour had gone on for another day that would have been it: brown bread.’ After 11 days in hospital the father of two was allowed home and spent seven weeks ‘recuperating, learning to walk again’.

‘So I was incredibly lucky – although, I have to say, I didn’t feel terribly lucky at the time,’ he said. ‘I lay awake all night, wondering if I was going to die. In the hospital, alone at the dead of night, I’d prayed: Please don’t let me die, please let me see my kids again, please give me a little longer.’

Sir Elton said he had opted for surgery for the prostate cancer rather than a course of radiation and chemotherapy because the latter would have meant dozens of trips to hospital.

Instead, he ‘just wanted rid of it’ and did not like the idea of cancer ‘hanging over’ him, his husband and their two children, Zachary and Elijah, for years to come. 

Elton uncensored: M – by Sir Elton John

A couple of years ago David presented me with a sheet of paper. He’d written down a load of dates relating to our sons’ school life — when each term would start, how long the holidays were, the years they’d be moving from infants to juniors and then secondary school, when they’d be sitting exams.

‘How much of this do you want to be around for?’ he asked. ‘You can work your tour schedules around it.’

I looked at the paper. It effectively mapped out Zachary and Elijah’s lives. By the time they reached the final dates on it, they’d be teenagers, young men. And I’d be in my 80s.

‘All of it,’ I said finally. ‘I want to be there for all of it.’

David raised his eyebrows. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘you need to think about changing your life. You need to think about retiring from touring.’

I’d settled into fatherhood far more easily than I’d ever have expected. I loved doing everyday stuff with Zachary and Elijah — taking them to the cinema, going to Legoland, to Watford football matches and to meet Father Christmas at Windsor Great Park.

I loved how having kids rooted me in the village nearest to Woodside, our home in Old Windsor. I’d lived there since the mid-Seventies, without ever really getting to know anyone locally. But when the boys started nursery and school, their friends’ parents became our friends.

They didn’t care about who I was. A harassed mum at the school gates is less interested in asking how you wrote Bennie And The Jets, or what Princess Diana was really like, than in talking about packed lunches and the difficulty of assembling a costume for the Nativity play at 48 hours’ notice — which was fine by me.

But I’ve always thought of myself as a working musician; I prided myself on playing 120 gigs a year, just as I had in the Seventies. I had a habit of telling people I wanted to die onstage, and a habit of ignoring David rolling his eyes whenever I said it.

Still, this list of school dates had thrown me. My kids were only going to grow up once. I didn’t want to be busy playing the Taco Bell Arena, Boise while it happened.

So we started making plans for a farewell tour — a big celebration, a thank you to the people who’d bought tickets and albums over the years.

The plans for it were already underway when I found out I had cancer.

They discovered it during a routine check-up. My doctor noticed the level of prostate- specific antigens in my blood had gone up slightly and sent me to an oncologist for a biopsy. It came back positive.

I wasn’t as shocked at hearing the word ‘cancer’ as I might have been. It was prostate cancer: no joke, but incredibly common. They’d caught it early, and besides, I’m blessed with a constitution that just makes me bounce back from illnesses.

A few years previously, I’d managed to play nine gigs, take 24 flights and perform with Coldplay at a fundraising ball for the AIDS Foundation — with a burst appendix. 

It had been misdiagnosed as a colon infection. I could have died: normally when your appendix bursts it causes peritonitis, which kills you within a few days. So I had my appendix out, spent a couple of days in hospital and a few weeks recuperating, then went back on the road.

It’s just how I am. If I hadn’t got the constitution I have, all the drugs I took would have killed me decades ago.

The oncologist told me I had two options. One was surgery to remove my prostate. The other was a course of radiation and chemotherapy that meant I would have to go back to hospital dozens of times.

I went straight for the surgery. A lot of men won’t have it, because it’s a major operation, you can’t have sex for at least a year afterwards and you can’t control your bladder for a while.

But effectively my kids made the decision for me. I didn’t like the idea of cancer hanging over me — us — for years to come: I just wanted rid of it.

I had the surgery done in Los Angeles in 2017, quickly and quietly. The operation was a complete success.

It wasn’t until I arrived in Las Vegas ten days later for a gig at Caesars Palace that I noticed something wasn’t right. I woke in the morning feeling a little uncomfortable. As the day progressed, the pain got worse and worse.

The band suggested cancelling the show, but I said no. Before you start marvelling at my bravery and professionalism, I should point out that playing a gig seemed preferable to sitting around with nothing to do, while in exactly the same agony.

So on I went, wearing special pants to deal with my bladder, which, as predicted, had developed a mind of its own since the operation. If nothing else, that was something different: I’ve worn some ridiculous things onstage in my time, but never a giant nappy. I don’t know if you’ve ever stood in front of 4,000 cheering fans, singing Candle In The Wind while literally p***ing yourself, but if you haven’t, I can tell you for a fact it’s quite an odd experience.

It turned out that I had a rare complication from the operation: fluid was leaking from my lymph nodes. I had it drained at the hospital and the pain went away.

The fluid built up again and the pain came back. This cycle went on for two-and-a-half months, before doctors cured it by accident: a routine colonoscopy shifted the fluid permanently, days before my 70th birthday.

The party to celebrate my birthday was in Hollywood. David brought Zachary and Elijah over from London as a surprise. Stevie Wonder, Ryan Adams, Rosanne Cash and Lady Gaga performed. Prince Harry sent a video, wishing me all the best while wearing a pair of Elton John glasses.

It was a magical evening. I was cancer-free and pain-free. The complications had been fixed. I was about to go back on tour, down to South America.

Everything was back to normal. Until I nearly died.

It was on the flight back from Santiago that I started feeling ill. I couldn’t stop shaking.

When I got home, I called a doctor, who advised me to rest. The next morning, I woke up feeling worse than I ever had in my life. Given some of the hangovers I’d had in the ’70s and ’80s, that was saying something.

I was taken to King Edward VII’s Hospital in London, where I had a scan. I was told my condition was so serious, the hospital didn’t have the equipment to cope with it. I had to be moved to The London Clinic.

My last memory is of hyperventilating while they were trying to find a vein to give me an injection. I have really muscular arms, so it’s always been difficult, compounded by the fact that I hate needles. Eventually, they had to bring in a Russian nurse, a woman who was built like an Olympic shot-putter, to administer the sedative.

By 2.30, I was on the operating table, having more lymphatic fluid drained — this time from my diaphragm.

For two days afterwards, I was in intensive care. When I came round, they told me I’d contracted a major infection in South America, and that they were treating it with massive intravenous doses of antibiotics.

But the fever came back. They took a sample of the infection and grew it in a Petri dish. It was much more serious than they’d first realised.

There were MRI scans and God knows how many other procedures. The doctors told David I was 24 hours away from death. If the South American tour had gone on for another day that would have been it: brown bread.

So I was incredibly lucky — although, I have to say, I didn’t feel terribly lucky at the time. I lay awake all night, wondering if I was going to die.

After 11 days, I was allowed to leave. I spent seven weeks recuperating, learning to walk again. It was the kind of forced leisure that would ordinarily have driven me up the wall — I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent this long at home — but, as ill as I felt, I really enjoyed it.

I settled into a domestic routine, pottering around the grounds, waiting for the boys to come home from school.

In the hospital, alone at the dead of night, I’d prayed: please don’t let me die, please let me see my kids again, please give me a little longer. In a strange way, it felt like the time I spent recuperating was the answer to my prayers: if you want more time, you need to learn to live like this, you have to slow down.

It was like being shown a different life, a life I realised I loved more than being on the road. Music was the most wonderful thing, but it still didn’t sound as good as Zachary chattering about what had happened at Cubs or football practice.

Any lingering doubts about retiring from touring just evaporated.

Me: Elton John Official Autobiography by Elton John is published by Macmillan on October 15, £25. © Elton John 2019.

To order a copy for £12.50 (50 per cent discount) call 01603 648155 or go to mailshop.co.uk

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