Earlier this month, Retton suffered a “scary setback” in her battle with a rare form of pneumonia
After “fighting for her life” in the ICU with pneumonia, Mary Lou Retton is now back home and recovering.
“Mom is HOME & in recovery mode,” Retton’s daughter, McKenna Lane Kelley, wrote in a statement shared on Instagram. “We still have a long road of recovery ahead of us, but baby steps.” She continued, “We are overwhelmed with the love and support from everyone. Grateful doesn’t scrape the surface of the posture of our hearts. Thank you Jesus, thank you doctors & nurses, thank you to this loving community of support.”
The good news comes after Retton’s family shared she experienced a “scary setback” last week. “Basically, at the beginning of this week, we were going on the up and up, we were so excited, seeing so much progress, and then yesterday we had a pretty scary setback,” her daughter, Shayla Schrepfer, said in an Instagram video. “She is still in ICU, and we’re just working through some things as far as her setback goes.”
Earlier this month, Kelley posted that her mother had been hospitalized and was battling a “very rare form of pneumonia.” She also disclosed that Retton was not insured and posted a fundraiser with a goal of raising $50,000. After the story was widely shared on media outlets, the fundraiser has garnered nearly $460,000 with over 8,300 donors as of the time of this posting.
The Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast made history at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles when she became the first American woman to win an individual all-around gold medal. Although Retton had undergone knee surgery weeks before the competition, she scored a perfect 10 on the floor and vault, beating Romania’s Ecaterina Szabo by five-hundredths of a point.