Fidel Castro delivers a speech in Havana on Aug. 17 to members of a Cuban medical brigade who arrived recently from Bolivia. (Roberto Chile/Cudadebate/Associated Press)

Fidel Castro was so sick when he was forced to give up power four years ago that he thought he would die, the former Cuban leader has told a Mexican newspaper.

"I was at death's door, but I came back," Castro said in an interview published Monday with the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada.

The extensive interview is just the second the 84-year-old has given to a foreign journalist since he fell ill in 2006. He ceded the presidency to his younger brother, Raul, in 2008, but remains head of the Communist Party.

In the five-hour interview with La Jornada's editor, Castro said his weight fell to 145 pounds during the illness — extremely thin for a man thought to be about six-foot-three and known for his large frame. He is now back up to 190 pounds and looks healthy if sometimes frail.

"I couldn't aspire to live any longer, much less anything else," Castro said. "I asked myself several times if these people [the doctors] would let me live under these conditions or whether they would allow me to die."

'I recovered'

The government has never said officially what Castro was suffering from when he fell ill in July 2006, though it was widely reported to have been complications involving diverticulitis, an intestinal ailment common in older people. He has said in the past that he underwent several surgeries and mentioned that again in the La Jornada interview.

Castro was treated in an undisclosed location and vanished from public view, though he has kept up a steady stream of opinion columns throughout. His voice seems to gain strength as he talks.

In the interview, Castro described lying in a hospital room during the illness, hooked up to machines, and wondering how long it would be before his suffering would be over.

"Laid out in that bed, I could only see what was around me, machines I did not understand," Castro said. "I didn't know how long this torment would continue. The only thing I could hope for was that the world would stop.

"But I recovered," he added, proudly.

Castro said when he did get better, he was in terrible shape, but that in the intervening years, he has steadily gained strength to the point where he can now walk long distances unaided.