Stephenie Rodriguez has quite the story.

She is a single mother of one and a digital entrepreneur. She has done incredible things for women, inventing a personal safety device WanderSafe, and she is a member of UN Women Australia.

But Stephenie has also faced adversity and hardship. And, she has beaten all the odds, as two years ago she was given a two per cent chance of surviving.

Why you may ask? It all came down to a single mosquito bite.

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In late 2019, Stephenie's career was skyrocketing. She was off to Nigeria for a work conference and in that same fortnight, Stephenie was set to travel to America as she had just won a four-day girl's weekend raffle which included tickets to a US baseball game with her close friend, Liz.

While in Nigeria, Stephenie was bitten by a mosquito. At the time, she didn't think anything of it.

So after lots of travelling across the globe in those two weeks, Stephenie was understandably feeling extremely tired. She put it down to jet lag.

"I had a bit of congestion, which I figured was a bit of airplane flu. It was pre-COVID times. I also felt feverish, but I had a 'soldier on' attitude," Stephenie shared onMamamia's No Filter podcast.

So at the end of her American trip, Stephenie and her close friend Liz went to Boston airport ready to come home to Australia.

"The whole day is a bit of a blur. It was like moving through butter, and my close friend was worried - it was out of character."

Stephenie then collapsed on the floor of the airport.

According to Liz, Stephenie began to foam at the mouth and was convulsing. Liz screamed for a doctor and luckily there were two in the airport lounge who came to assist. Stephenie was then evacuated from the airport to the nearest hospital. If Stephenie had gone on the plane, doctors told Stephenie her heart would have exploded when the cabin pressurised.

"It was a sliding doors kind of moment," Stephenie reflected.

Initially, doctors assumed Stephenie was a stroke victim. They then tested for meningococcal. Once they realised Stephenie had travelled to Africa, that's when further theories emerged.

Listen to Stephenie Rodriguez talk with Mia Freedman on No Filter. Post continues after audio.

Liz began to get in touch with Stephenie's family back home, including a business partner who happened to be a doctor as well. As a medical student, the business partner had worked on the Gates Foundation developing the drug that kills malaria once it's in the body. He asked for the physicians working with Stephenie to immediately screen for parasites. That is when Stephenie's condition was finally confirmed.

She had cerebral malaria.

In simple terms, it involves a parasite that attacks the bloodstream that then attacks the brain, resulting in swelling, brain damage, seizures and in many cases, death. Cerebral malaria can also develop incredibly quickly - from the moment Stephenie had been bitten by the mosquito in Africa, to ending up in the emergency hospital, it had been just two weeks.