‘They were about to put me on life support’

Olympic gold medal gymnast Mary Lou Retton spoke out for the first time about her her recovery after a life-threatening battle with pneumonia last year.

“I am blessed to be here because there is a time when they were about to put me on life support,” Retton, who won a gold medal in the 1984 Summer Olympics, said in an exclusive interview with NBC’s TODAY show — her first since she was hospitalized in October.

Retton, 55, spoke to TODAY’s Hoda Kotb from her home in Boerne, Texas, where she is recuperating. Retton is using portable oxygen and appeared in interview with tubes attached to her person. She was joined by her eldest daughter Shayla Schrepfer.

“Usually my interviews are, ‘Oh yes — it felt great to win the Olympics,’ you know?” Retton said. “This is serious and this is life.”

Retton contracted a rare form of pneumonia that rendered her critically ill in the fall. She was hospitalized in the intensive care unit and unable to breathe on her own, her daughter, McKenna Lane Kelley, said in a post on a crowd-funding page in October.

Retton’s family sought donations to help cover her hospital bill. According to Kelley, Retton was not insured at the time of her illness. The family’s crowd-funding effort has raised more than $459,000 to date.

Retton was released from the hospital in late October and returned to her home near Houston, Texas. 

“I’m with family continuing to slowly recover and staying very positive as I know this recovery is a long and slow process,” she wrote in an Instagram post on Oct. 30.

Pneumonia is a lung infection that can be caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi. It can cause air sacs in the lungs to fill with fluid or pus, leading to a cough, fever, fatigue and difficulty breathing.

Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, said both viral and bacterial pneumonia “have the same spectrum — from mild cases that can be managed outpatient to severe cases that are leading to respiratory failure.”

According to the American Lung Association, pneumonia leads to more than a million hospitalizations and more than 50,000 deaths each year in the U.S. Older adults, young children, people who smoke cigarettes and people with underlying medical conditions such as severe asthma or lung disease are especially vulnerable to infection.

Flu viruses, the coronavirus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are all common causes of viral pneumonia. Common signs include shortness of breath, a high fever and blue lips.

Bacterial pneumonia, meanwhile, is usually caused by one of two types of bacteria. It tends to be more severe than viral pneumonia and is treated with antibiotics.

But pneumonia caused by rare bacteria can be more challenging to treat and require longer hospital stays, Galiatsatos said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends vaccines for certain groups to protect against pneumococcal disease — a range of bacterial infections that includes pneumonia as well as and sinus and ear infections.

One such vaccine has been available to older adults and those with high-risk medical conditions since 1984, and two newer shots were approved in the last few years for other age groups.

Now, pneumococcal vaccines are recommended for all children under age 5 and adults ages 65 and up, as well as anyone with an elevated risk of pneumococcal disease. 

But Galiatsatos said the vaccine is still not considered an “‘everyone go out and get it’ vaccine.”

“We would really recommend these vaccines for the individuals that are most likely to develop streptococcal pneumonia,” he said.

Galiatsatos added that pneumonia cases seem particularly high this winter.

“This one can be easily put in the top tier of really bad winters with regards to lung infections such as pneumonia,” he said.