(RNS) — Bishop T.D. Jakes has disclosed that the medical incident that occurred as he spoke before his Dallas megachurch in November was a “massive heart attack.”
“I didn’t really realize what was happening to me onstage until I got to the hospital in an ambulance and fussing that it happened onstage, by the way, because I didn’t want it to happen, and the doctor leaned over my ear and said, ‘You had a massive heart attack,’” Jakes said on NBC’s “Today” show in an exclusive interview on Wednesday (March 26).
Jakes, 67, who also is an author and business executive, suffered what his church initially called “a slight health incident” at The Potter’s House during the Nov. 24 worship service. On that occasion, about a dozen people rushed to his side after he lowered his microphone and was shaking in his seat.
“The reason I didn’t realize it was because I had none of the symptoms that they say,” Jakes said in the interview about the heart attack with “Today” co-anchor Craig Melvin, adding that the doctor said he would have been dead on arrival had he reached the hospital five minutes later.
“The right side of my heart had completely stopped getting blood at all.”
Jakes’ lawyers filed a defamation suit on his behalf the day after the inciden …