TV presenter Charlie Webster on the road to recovery

The distressing pictures of Charlie Webster in a coma hooked up to a life support machine in a Rio hospital battling for life are tough viewing. Just days earlier the television presenter was celebrating having cycled 3,000 miles across Brazil for the Jane Tomlinson appeal.

“We were euphoric. We went up to the statue of Christ the Redeemer and looked over Rio where I was due to be involved in presenting the Olympics in a few days,” recalls Sheffield-born Charlie. “We all felt utterly exhausted and none of us ever wanted to see a bike again, but I also remember feeling how lucky I was to be there and said a prayer. I was so grateful for my life, a few days later I was told I was about to lose it.”

Charlie, 35, had contracted a very rare form of malaria while riding in remote parts of Brazil which doctors in Rio struggled to diagnose, delaying vital treatment.

Charlie was put into an induced coma as doctors tried to work out what was wrong with her and then, when they eventually tested for malaria, treat it. She later learnt that she’d had to be resuscitated and had been put on a life-support machine.

Her mum had flown out from Leeds to be with her daughter and although Charlie was in a coma she was aware of what was going on around her. “I could hear them talking. I could hear them say I only had 24 hours to live. It was a living nightmare as I had no way of letting them know that I could hear them. But I was determined not to leave my mum as I knew it would break her heart if I died. They also told her that if I did survive I could be brain-damaged as the malaria had caused a haemorrhage in my brain and they didn’t know what damage would have been caused.”

Despite the dire prognosis doctors decided to treat Charlie with anti-malaria drugs, unsure whether she would respond. But she did.

After a month in hospital in Rio she was eventually flown back to the UK and to St James’s Hospital in Leeds where she spent another month. She has sustained permanent damage to her kidneys and may need a transplant in the future. She has to be careful what she eats and can’t touch alcohol again. But it wasn’t just the physical scars that Charlie has been left with.

“I have struggled a lot psychologically. Being told you are going to die really messes with your head, I have flashbacks and problems sleeping and have been diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I know I am lucky to be alive but it has changed me and changed my life.”

Doctors says if Charlie hadn’t be so fit it is unlikely she would have survived, but she believes it is also the strength of her will which pulled her through. “I did not want to die and I was determined not to, but it was hard, it was absolutely exhausting.”

After she left St James’s she went to live with her mum in Leeds as she learnt to do many of the things she had taken for granted again. When she was eventually able to return to her flat in London it was an emotional experience.