My toughest challenge yet
Judo star on road to recovery after horrific Vietnam accident
SHE spent five weeks in an induced coma after a motorbike fall that doctors gave her only a 1 per cent chance of surviving.
Friends and strangers raised £300,000 to fly judo star Stephanie Inglis home from Vietnam after the freak accident, believed to have happened when her skirt got caught in the back wheel of her motorcycle taxi.
But the first she knew of any of this was when she woke up in hospital in Edinburgh, as the trauma suffered by her brain and body erased the memories.
Speaking for the first time following her amazing recovery, which has seen her start to walk again, Commonwealth Games medal winner Miss Inglis said: ‘My first memory or thought when I woke up was, “Where am I?” I first saw my mum and dad and they explained to me what had happened. I couldn’t get my head around all that had happened to me – and having no memory of anything was scary.’
Miss Inglis, from Daviot, near Inverness, had taken a break from sport to recuperate following a knee reconstruction. She travelled to Vietnam to teach children English. It was while taking a motorcycle taxi to work on May 10 that she was dragged from the vehicle, suffering head injuries.
Her travel insurance was deemed invalid and her family was hit with medical bills of £2,000 for every day she spent in hospital.
Back in Scotland, Miss Inglis’s friend, Khalid Gehlan, set up an online fundraising page, which raised more than £300,000 for her care. With finance secured, she was moved to an intensive care unit in Hanoi for a lifesaving craniotomy operation, to open part of her skull and relieve the extreme pressure on her brain.
Her mother Alison said: ‘Without the money she wouldn’t be here; if we couldn’t have paid the bills, she wouldn’t have received treatment.’
After a further operation on her brain in Thailand, she returned to Scotland. Now being rehabilitated at Cameron Hospital in Windygates, Fife, Miss Inglis is hopeful for the future. An occupational therapist has been teaching the 27-yearold simple tasks, while a physiotherapist has been helping her walk upstairs.
She said: ‘I’m feeling good, nearly back to normal. My therapy sessions are going really well and I’m just waiting on an update about when I can get home properly.
‘The goal is to return to how I was. Judo was my normal life and I want it to be again. I want to return to fitness training as I can’t imagine life without it.’