In his new Netflix comedy special “What Had Happened Was,” Jamie Foxx finally told the story behind the mysterious and harrowing medical emergency that left him hospitalized and fighting for his life in 2023.

Coming on stage and proclaiming, “I’m back!” As he danced and got the crowd pumped up, Foxx said his life was saved just a quarter mile from the Atlanta Theater at Piedmont Hospital.

The Oscar and Grammy winner held back tears as he discussed his “mystery illness,” saying, “Please, Lord, let me get through this.”

“On April 11, I had a bad headache and asked my boy for aspirin. “I quickly realized that in a medical emergency, your boys don’t know what to do,” Foxx joked.

He said before he could even take the aspirin, he passed out and remained unconscious for weeks. “I don’t remember 20 days,” Foxx said. He was told that his friends took him to a doctor in Atlanta, who gave him a cortisone shot and sent him on his way. “What the hell is that?” Foxx joked. “I don’t know if you can make Yelps for doctors, but that’s half a star.”

His sister Deidra Dixon, whom he described as “six feet tall and full of pure love,” knew Foxx was experiencing something much worse. “She says, ‘Put him in the car. “That’s not my brother,” Foxx said. “She spun around – she didn’t know anything about Piedmont Hospital, but she had a hunch there were some angels there.”

At Piedmont, a doctor told Dixon that Foxx “had a brain hemorrhage that resulted in a stroke” and that he would die if they didn’t operate on him as quickly as possible. “My sister knelt outside the operating room and prayed the whole time,” Foxx said.

He said it was “somehow strangely peaceful” being unconscious, adding: “I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light.” Foxx then joked, “It was hot in that tunnel. Shit, am I going the wrong way in this bastard? ‘Cause I looked at the end of the tunnel and I thought I saw the devil saying, ‘Come on.’ Or is that Puffy (Sean Combs)?”

After the procedure, the doctor told Dixon that Foxx “may be able to make a full recovery, but it will be the worst year of his life.” Foxx agreed, “That’s it.”

As he entered his recovery process, Foxx said Dixon and his daughter Corinne Marie Foxx “cut everything off” and shielded Foxx from the outside world. “They didn’t want you to see me like that. And I didn’t want you to see me like that,” Foxx said, choking up. “I want you to see me like this.”

When he fully woke up in a Chicago rehabilitation center on May 4, Foxx didn’t understand why he was in a wheelchair. And despite what he was told, he couldn’t fully wrap his head around the fact that he was having a stroke. He told the audience about his long road to recovery and reluctance to be bathed by a nurse – before she told him she had been bathing him for weeks, he just couldn’t remember. “I couldn’t wipe my own ass,” Foxx said.

“I lost everything, but the only thing I was able to keep was my sense of humor,” Foxx said, before repeating a mantra from the comedy special: “If I could stay funny, I could stay alive,” afterward The comedian went through celebrity impressions including Denzel Washington, Dave Chappelle, Mike Tyson, Jay-Z and Donald Trump.

He said that for the first 15 days of his hospital stay, doctors thought he was dying because his vitals were too high and he had to be kept quiet. “You know what the worst thing is, trying to stay calm in the hospital room? Black family members,” Foxx joked, before mimicking his panicked relatives.

Foxx said he didn’t want his youngest daughter, 14-year-old Anelise Bishop, to see him in that condition. Nevertheless, she sneaked into his hospital room with her guitar and began playing music, causing Foxx’s vitals to drop. “It was God in that guitar,” Foxx said, calling the incident a “miracle.” “This is my spiritual defibrillator.”

Bishop then took the stage and played a Rickenbacker electric guitar for a father-daughter duet that had the audience (and Foxx and Bishop) wiping tears from their eyes. “You had to do it because I always dreamed that one day we would be on stage together,” Bishop said.

Elsewhere in the special, Foxx discussed the internet conspiracy theories surrounding his medical emergencies (“You motherfuckers really thought I was a clone”) and his spirituality (“God gave me a second chance”).

Foxx also performed a brief highlight reel of his most famous characters and led the theater in dancing and singing along. The “Ray” and “Dreamgirls” star sat down at the piano to sing a gospel number and a rollicking song about why he’s tired of dating white women.

In closing, Foxx expressed his sincere thanks to everyone who prayed for his recovery, to his nurses and doctors, to his family, to God and to the city of Atlanta. As he shook hands with audience members in the front row, Foxx sang, “Thank you for my body. Thank you for my soul.”