It felt like my body was EATING ITSELF
TV sports reporter Charlie Webster almost died when she was struck down by malaria at the Rio Olympics and her organs shut down. Here, on the road to recovery, she tells Jenny Johnston the full terrifying story
Sports presenter Charlie Webster went for a spa day with her mum recently, a welcome respite for both of them after the most traumatic eight months of their lives. Even in the most tranquil of surroundings, however, there was a reminder of how much Charlie’s life has changed. As she lay down on the treatment bed, she suffered a panic attack, the latest in a spate of them.
‘Maybe it was the position I was in, lying straight with my arms by my sides, that reminded me of being in that hospital bed with restraints on. I sat up and had to explain why I was freaking out.’
The explanation is complicated. Last August, while she was covering the Olympics in Brazil, Charlie, then 33, hit the headlines in the most unexpected way. On the eve of the games she became ill. At first she thought it was exhaustion – she had, after all, travelled to Rio by taking part in Ride To Rio, a 4,800km charity cycle ride. It was infinitely more serious, however. She was suffering from a condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a rare complication of a bacterial infection. On top of this, she’d contracted malaria.
As the Olympics got underway, and despite having dragged herself in front of the cameras for the first day, Charlie was rushed to hospital, at first suffering from cramps, diarrhoea and vomiting, but then bleeding uncontrollably. ‘From everywhere,’ she says. As doctors struggled to find out what was wrong, her condition deteriorated. Her organs began to shut down. Within three days, as her mother Joy rushed to be at her side, her kidneys had failed and she was placed on dialysis. After a week her lungs collapsed. It became clear her life was hanging in the balance. Her mother was told to prepare for the worst. ‘They thought I wouldn’t make it. I was actually told I was dying,’ she says.
She was placed in an induced coma but even then she was not, she believes, ‘completely under’. She was aware of conversations between the doctors and her family about whether, even if she survived, she would be brain-damaged.
She tells the story calmly but there’s no mistaking her distress about this living nightmare. The fact that she walks into the room where we’re meeting looking a picture of health is a miracle in itself.
Physically, Charlie has defied all the odds. She’s able to walk and talk again and has even managed a few short runs.
‘The doctors say I’m months ahead of what they’d expected,’ she beams. ‘They can’t believe my progress.’
The mental recovery, however, has been slower. Panic attacks and crippling flashbacks of her time in hospital, hovering between life and death, are something she’s been dealing with regularly.
She’s been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. ‘When you’ve been through what I have, your head can have problems processing it.’
Her account of lying in a limbo state is horrifying, similar to suffering from ‘locked-in syndrome’ whereby the whole body goes into paralysis. ‘I’d get very distressed and try to get out of the bed and end up flailing about,’ she says.
‘My family were told it was spasms or involuntary movements and I had to be actually tied down to the bed but it wasn’t. I was trying to communicate that I was there.
‘It would have been much easier if I’d been out of it for the whole thing. I wouldn’t have these memories. But I was completely conscious when my lungs collapsed. I was panicking, aware that I couldn’t breathe. When I was bleeding the pain was indescribable. I’ve never felt pain like it. It felt as if my body was eating itself.
‘Later, when I’d come out of the coma, I still couldn’t speak. I could hear the doctors asking me basic questions like, “What’s your name?” and I knew the answers but I couldn’t get them out. To be trapped like that is the most horrible feeling you can imagine.’
She still seems shocked that she couldn’t just ‘shake off’ her mental trauma. After all, no one could accuse Charlie of being weakwilled. This is a woman who went public about being sexually assaulted by a sports coach in her teens, waiving her anonymity.
And before she fell ill she resigned as a patron of Sheffield United when they invited Ched Evans to train there again after he’d served a sentence for rape – but before his conviction was quashed on appeal.
Only for Charlie’s supreme physical fitness she probably wouldn’t be here at all today. The strain of malaria she caught (she had been told there was no need to take antimalarials before travelling) tends to kill unless it’s treated within days. She wasn’t tested for the disease for a week and, even then, it was only ‘by chance’ because the doctors had tested for everything else.
‘We all know being active is great for your health but I never imagined it would save my life like this,’ she says.
Doctors are still assessing the long-term damage. Her kidneys are working again and each kidney function test has seen an improvement. ‘There’s a lot of scarring though, so they just don’t know, long-term.’
Just a year previously, Charlie’s life had seemed one of endless glamour. She dated Downton Abbey’s Allen Leech who played Tom Branson but they split in December 2015, with Charlie explaining that it was the ‘wrong time’ to be in a relationship because their schedules were so hectic: ‘There’s no bad feeling at all – both of us are really career-minded.’
So what of Charlie’s career now? Although she’s gone back to work she’s clearly not working at her previous full-throttle levels. But starting running again has been an incredible milestone. ‘People have said to me, “Don’t worry about getting back to running. You don’t need to” but I absolutely do – for my head more than anything.’
She’s determined to turn what happened to her into ‘something positive’ and has even become an ambassador for the charity Malaria No More.
So what does the future hold? The old Charlie Webster might have signed up for another Ironman challenge but this one knows she has a long road ahead.
‘The biggest lesson I’ve learned is how to pace myself. I have to be patient, which I’ve never been very good at. But I’m learning fast.’
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