"I had a terrible cough. At one time, I coughed for five hours non-stop. I don't mean cough, break, cough, break. I mean cough, cough, cough for five hours non-stop. If you can imagine the drain that puts on your body," Smith said.
Overcoming the virus was especially difficult for Smith, who had a weakened immune system due to leukaemia and chemotherapy.
"I'm praying all the time thinking, 'The next one's gonna be negative, the next one's gonna be negative,' and it never was," he said.
Smith lost more than 60kg and dropped from a size 44 in men's trousers to a size 28 during his lengthy health battle.
"It's like somebody pulled the plug and everything, your life, is just drained out of your body. It's all gone."
He spoke of the mental toll the ongoing positive results took on him over the period.
"I'd resigned myself. I called the family in, made my peace with everybody, said goodbye, made out a list of what music I wanted played at my funeral."
'It's been a hell of a year'
Smith's wife Lynda said there were many occasions when she did not expect him to survive.
"There were a lot of times when we didn't think he was going to pull through. It's been a hell of a year, a nightmare," she said.
With limited options, doctors eventually gave Smith a cocktail of drugs made by US pharmaceutical company Regeneron, which was used to treat former US president Donald Trump.
After just two weeks of treatment, Smith's condition began to improve before he received a phone call to advise him of a negative test.
"We had a bottle of champagne we'd had around since God knows when, so we popped it open and we drank. We don't drink," he said.
"It was like you'd been given your life back."
Smith's case is now the subject of a study at Bristol University to find out if the virus can change and possibly mutate in one person.
