Michael Bublé opens up about son's cancer diagnosis: 'I wish that it had been' me

Michael Bublé is reflecting on one of the most challenging periods of his life. In 2016, the singer’s son Noah, who was 3 at the time, was diagnosed with liver cancer.

“What we went through was the, capital T-H-E, the worst possible thing that you could hear as a parent, and as maybe a human being,” he said on Australia’s Today. “I much rather it would have been me. I wished many times; I wish that it had been.”

Bublé added that there were many days when he and his wife, Luisana Lopilato, found it difficult to go on.

Michael Bublé with his son Noah. (Photo: Instagram/michaelbuble)
Michael Bublé with his son Noah. (Photo: Instagram/michaelbuble)

“There were a million times that my wife and I were just surviving, struggling to survive, and to breathe,” he explained, “and more times than people could understand, some days when we wished we didn’t wake up. When we did, we felt the love of those people. We felt we knew they were praying for us, we knew that there was goodness out there. It gave us faith in humanity, to be really blunt.”

The Grammy-winning singer is back on tour after putting his career on hold to help Noah, now 5, go through treatment. This summer, Bublé shared that his son was recovering well and doctors are “very optimistic about the future.”

“I don’t talk about the whole story, not even to my friends, because it hurts too much. It’s my boy,” he told the Herald Sun. “He’s a superhero; he doesn’t need to relive it over and again. But I’ve been to hell. And you know what, hell seems like a really nice place to vacation compared to where we’ve been. I truly thought I’d never come back to music.”

Perhaps Bublé’s new inspiration helped him return to music. In July, he and his wife welcomed their third child, a girl named Vida, which means “life.” They are also parents to a 2-year-old son, Elias.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: