Mary Lou Retton understands how fortunate she is to be alive.

“Girl, I should be dead,” she says PEOPLE in a new interview about her battle with a severe strain of pneumonia that left her intubated in the intensive care unit in 2023. She was so ill that doctors warned her four daughters she might not make it.

“The doctors told them to come to say their goodbyes,” recalls Retton, who spent a month in the hospital.

“They prayed over me, and McKenna said, ‘Mommy, it’s fine; you can go.'” I didn’t have a close connection with my mother, but I can’t imagine what it was like to watch her on her deathbed.”

Retton believes she survived because “God wasn’t ready for me yet,” but she has had long-term rehabilitation and thinks she will “never be the same.”

“It’s been really hard,” she acknowledges, adding that she still needs daily oxygen. “My lungs are severely scarred. There will be a lifetime of recuperation. All I had was my physique, and they had stripped it from me. “It is embarrassing.”

The new normal is especially tough to absorb when the Paris Olympics begin later this month. This August, Retton rose to prominence 40 years ago after winning gold in gymnastics all-around, a feat no American girl had previously achieved. Her final event was the vault, following a flawless 10 in her floor routine.

“My coach, Bela Karolyi, looked at me and said, ‘Mary Lou, you should give a ten.” He hadn’t said that before,” she says. “I said, ‘You’re putting pressure on me?'” “I will show you!” She delivered.

“You can see on the video that I was smiling before my feet touched the floor,” she explains, recalling how she landed successfully. “The Pauley Pavilion was shaking with all the cheering,” she admits. “They were all shouting, ‘Ten! Ten! Ten!'”

A star emerged, creating history. Retton became a household name, and she was the first girl to appear on a Wheaties cereal box. Two years later, she astonished the world again, this time by abandoning her sport entirely.

“I had gone above and beyond what I’d ever aspired to achieve,” she adds. “Winning something at the Olympics. I went on to win the entire event.