Muamba considers recovery 'a miracle'

Bolton midfielder Fabrice Muamba has described his recovery after suffering a cardiac arrest in front of thousands of soccer fans as "more than a miracle."

Muamba's heart stopped beating naturally for 78 minutes after he collapsed unconscious during Bolton's FA Cup quarter-final at Tottenham Hotspur on March 17.

But the 24-year-old Premier League star stunned doctors after coming back to life and was fit enough to walk out of the hospital just a month after his ordeal.

"What happened to me was really more than a miracle," Muamba, a devout Christian, told The Sun.

"On the morning of the game I prayed with my father and asked God to protect me -- and he didn't let me down.

"I am walking proof of the power of prayer. For 78 minutes I was dead and even if I lived was expected to have suffered brain damage.

"But I'm very much alive and sitting here talking now. Someone up there was watching over me."

Muamba said he was feeling "focused," "sharp" and "particularly fit" in the lead-up to the game. But 41 minutes into the first half he said he started to feel dizzy and began seeing double before collapsing to the turf.

FABRICE'S FIGHT

See the worldwide support for Bolton's midfielder Fabrice Muamba.

 

"It wasn't normal dizziness -- it was a kind of surreal feeling like I was running along inside someone else's body," he said.

"I had no pain whatsoever. No clutching at my chest or tightness like you see when people have heart attacks in movies. Just an odd feeling that's impossible to explain.

"Then I started to see double. It was almost like a dream."

Reliving the moment his heart stopped in front of stunned fans, he added, "I just felt myself falling through the air and then felt two big thumps as my head hit the ground in front of me then that was it. Blackness, nothing. I was dead."

Muamba did not know whether he would return to the field.

"It would be great to play football again and I hope that will happen. But it's even greater just to live life and love my family. I'm a lucky man," he said.