Detroit community activist Malik Shabazz continues recovery from massive heart attack

DETROIT (FOX 2) - Malik Shabazz has been hospitalized since suffering a massive heart attack, at the end of June.

The good news is Shabazz is improving and today he talked exclusively to FOX 2 inside his hospital room.

"I remember Akilah laying on my chest, rubbing my chest, and begging me to come back," he said. "(She said) 'Don’t leave me. Please come back, don’t die.' And, that’s all I remember."

Just about two months ago, on June 26th, the 60-year-old community activist Minister Malik Shabazz suffers a massive heart attack.

"It looked like there was no hope left- it looked like there was no life left," said Akilah Redmond.

The minister - unconscious- rushed to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where the cardiac surgeon said his heart had stopped for 45 minutes.

FOX 2:  "When he first came in, what was the prognosis?"

"Quite honestly, most people who come in a sick is he was, don't survive," said Kyle Miletic, Henry Ford Hospital.

And when word of the massive heart attack got out a quickly organized prayer vigil for the next day - a video of which Shabazz was just shown for the first time.

FOX 2: "Look at all the people"

"Wow," he said.

His wife Akilah told us she was worried but was grateful for the doctors and staff.

"And one of the things I’m so impressed about with Henry Ford Hospital is because they did not give up," she said.

And despite damage to the heart -not being able to pump on its own, the decision was made to surgically implant a new last chance - a $100K heart pumping device.

"This is not a very common procedure," said Miletic. "There are fewer than 4,000 of these pumps that are implanted every year in the United States. Despite almost a million people being diagnosed every year with heart failure.  

"There’s a big unmet need. But we are one of the centers that’s able to care for these kinds of sick and complex patients, and really one of only a couple in the state that can do that."

"He loves to look at pretty women. It’s helping him to heal to get better," said Akilah.

The minister will still need physical therapy to help him walk- and he should be moving to a rehabilitation facility any day now. But Malik Shabazz will live.

"I was dead but now I’m crying tears of joy because I’m alive," said Shabazz. "And God has given me another chance to be deeper, and deafer, and doper and better."