Mary Lou Retton in ‘recovery mode’ at home after hospital stay for pneumonia, daughter says
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American gymnastics icon Mary Lou Retton has returned home following a lengthy hospital stay because of pneumonia, her daughter said Monday.
Shaley Kelley Schrepfer, the oldest of Retton’s four daughters, posted an update on Retton’s condition on Instagram nearly two weeks after the family disclosed that the former Olympic all-around champion was in intensive care.
The 55-year-old Retton is now in “recovery mode,” according to Schrepfer.
“We still have a long road of recovery ahead of us,” Schrepfer wrote. “But baby steps.”
Donations have poured into a fundraiser the family set up to help offset Retton’s medical expenses after the family said she didn’t have medical insurance. There’s been more than 8,300 donations totalling nearly $460,000 US by Monday afternoon.
Retton was 16 when she became an icon of the U.S. Olympic movement during her gold medal-winning performance at the 1984 Summer Games. The native of Fairmont, West Virginia, also won two silver and two bronze medals at those Olympics to help bring gymnastics — a sport long dominated by eastern European powers like Romania and the Soviet Union — into the mainstream in the U.S.