Sports presenter Charlie Webster says she was ‘moments from death’ during her Olympics coma nightmare after she contracted malaria in Rio
TELLY presenter Charlie Webster has described the horrifying moment when she was told she was dying in a Brazilian hospital.
The sports host, 33, was urged to alert her family as she battled a rare form of malaria in Rio. She said: “I went into shock. Words can’t describe the pain I was in.”
Charlie described how she “spoke” with Death as she lay stricken.
The Team GB ambassador had been placed in a coma as doctors battled to work out what had caused her vital organs to collapse following a 3000-mile charity cycle ride.
It came after one medic announced: “We don’t know what is wrong yet, but we need you to know that you are dying.”
Bravely recalling her days in the coma Charlie, who was due to be the official presenter of Team GB’s online content during the Olympics, said she believes she came moments from death.
She said: “This is what is traumatising me a little bit — I remember having a conversation with Death and whether I was going to live or not.
“I just saw myself and we were in this black space and we weren’t people, we were just an energy. Death said to me, ‘Come on, you’ve got to go’.
“I actually said Yes to start with — like I’m happy to die because I just couldn’t do it any more.
“There’s no words to describe how much pain I was in.
“I feel awful as I wanted to die and remember being happy with what I’ve done with my life.”
At that point during her interview with The Sun brave Charlie — who according to friends never cries — broke down in tears.
After recovering, she went on: “Oh God it’s awful, it makes me upset. But within a second of saying that I thought ‘No’. And I remember shouting ‘No, no. no’.”
“The last thing I thought was that I haven’t made a will, I need to make sure my money goes to my family.
“I also remember a promise I made to my mum that I wouldn’t leave her, weirdly enough, before I set out on the cycle ride.
“She had a feeling that something was going to go wrong before the race.
“So I said, ‘I’ve only come so far in the mission of what I want to complete in my life. I’ve got to do this. I’m not dying. No chance’. Then I was kind of back.
“It was so real. You know when you have dreams, but I remember this so clearly.”
Charlie, who hit fame as a Sky Sports News presenter but has also worked for Channel 4, Channel 5, the BBC and ITV, is now recovering from her ordeal.
She fell ill after riding across Brazil to raise money for the .
She arrived in Rio on Thursday, August 4 and attended the Olympics opening the next day before admitting herself to hospital on the night of the ceremony, thinking she was dehydrated.
Charlie — who recently split from Downton Abbey actor Allen Leech — had planned the trip of a lifetime with her best friend Annie, who met up with her in the Brazilian city.
Instead, the pair were soon in an ambulance “like something out of the 1960s” speeding through the bumpy roads as terrified Charlie fought for survival.
She said: “I was just in tears and Annie looked like a ghost. I couldn’t even look at her.”
FACTS ABOUT DEADLY MALARIA
MALARIA is a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes and can be fatal if not diagnosed and treated promptly.
Symptoms usually appear around a week after infection and include fever, headaches, vomiting, muscle pains and diarrhoea.
Last year, there were 214million cases worldwide and an estimated 438,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.
Malaria is not found in the UK but in 2014, 1,586 travellers were diagnosed with it after returning to Britain and three of those died.
Insect repellents, nets and anti-malarial pills are the best ways to avoid infection.
Thankfully Annie had been able to assure the hospital that her pal had travel insurance.
She says: “If she hadn’t been there I don’t know what would’ve happened. They wouldn’t treat me till the insurance was sorted.
“They left me — and if I hadn’t paid for it they would have just left me to die.”
With Charlie convulsed in pain, worried medics were clearly baffled by the cause.
She said: “The doctor came over and said I was being moved urgently to another hospital because I needed dialysis.
“Then he said, ‘We don’t know what is wrong yet but we need you to know that you are dying. Get hold of your family’.”
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Charlie went into “complete shock” as she thought of her mum and brother in the UK being told the news. Then her body started to shut down.
She said: “Blood was coming out of every part of my body. I was just curled up and in so much pain, it’s hard to describe.
“I felt like my body was imploding from inside — and it was. My organs were pushing against my skin and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong.
“I panicked quite a lot and I fought them letting me go to sleep because I was so scared that if I shut my eyes I would die.”
When Charlie’s traumatised mum Joy, who had never left Europe, arrived in Rio on August 12 she was met by the hospital director.
Charlie said: “He told my mum, ‘I’m going to put your daughter in a coma now or she’s going to die’. She immediately signed the form.”
During her days in the coma, the presenter’s amazing spirit saw her stage a physical battle to recover.
She said: “My whole body had to be restrained as I was fighting all the time — banging and smashing and trying to pull everything out.
“They said that’s what kept me alive. The only two things working for themselves were my brain and heart — every other organ failed.”
Motor sports specialist Charlie, seen most recently as a sports expert on Good Morning Britain, was finally diagnosed on August 15.
I SWELLED UP BY FIVE STONE
MEDICS pumped so much fluid into Charlie Webster to stop her organs failing that she put on almost 5st.
Charlie, who usually weighs 9st 4lbs, said her medical notes said she had to be “aggressively resuscitated”.
She said: “That means everything was failing and they had to pump liquid into me to stop my organs from dying.
“At one point I weighed 14st because they put so much in. I was so bloated, my tummy looked like I was about nine months pregnant.”
“I wonder if that’s the same time I decided to stay alive?
“The doctors said they’ve never met anyone with such fight and that my heart was a perfect heart, that’s what kept me alive.”
Charlie now weighs around 10st, where doctors have said they want her to stay.
Confused doctors had sent blood samples to labs and contacted experts in the US in a desperate attempt to find what was wrong.
Charlie said: “Then one doctor said, ‘I think we should check for malaria’. They were disagreeing — but imagine if she hadn’t said that.”
Tests soon revealed she had contracted a rare form of malaria.
She’d had 12 injections before her cycling trip but was assured by two different doctors that she did not need one for malaria.
Charlie said: “They reckon I got it in a place called Bahia, which was very poor and we’d stayed in a beach hut.
“Malaria sits dormant on your liver so I’m on special tablets as well to kill it because it can creep up again. I’m so paranoid about it but they’ve said it will go.”
Once out of her coma, doctors carried out repeated neurological tests, fearing possible brain damage.
But on August 30 Charlie was well enough to be taken by a specialist medical plane to Leeds, accompanied by medics and her mum.
Even then she was forced to stay under isolation at the city’s St James’s Hospital due to a bug she picked up on the unit in Brazil.
Her kidneys are currently functioning at 24 per cent but they need to improve to 70 per cent for her to live a full and healthy life.
As a result, she must drink a minimum of four litres of water a day.
Charlie’s UK doctors have called her recovery “remarkable”. And she said: “It’s like a miracle.”
The star is still exhausted but is staying with her mum as a hospital outpatient and aims to return to presenting by the end of the year.
She asked that her interview fee be donated to Comic Relief who support malaria charities abroad and UK domestic violence charities — causes she is passionate about.
The charity said: “We are grateful to Charlie. It will help those living incredibly tough lives in Africa and in the UK.”
BLURRY VISION SINCE I WOKE
CHARLIE fears for her sight after waking from her coma unable to see.
She said: “It’s still not great, which really worries me. When I first woke up I couldn’t see and then everything was blurred.
“I saw an eye specialist who said I had blood at the back of my eyes from the coma. Hopefully it will disperse and I will go back to normal.”
A CT scan has since found no long-term harm to her brain or eyes.