Injured judo star winning her fight for life
THE sister of a seriously injured Scottish judo star has told of her family’s delight as she begins to move and respond to voices.
Stephanie Inglis suffered head injuries on May 12 when her skirt was caught in the wheel of a motorcycle taxi in Vietnam as she made her way to work as an English teacher.
Despite being given a 1 per cent chance of survival, the 27-year-old from Inverness woke up from a coma on Tuesday after three weeks and has since fought off a number of life-threatening infections.
Her parents, Robert and Alison, flew out to Vietnam to be with her. They revealed that their daughter had started to cry when she saw them and that she had reached for her father’s hand.
Since then she has continued to make improvements and has been responding to voices and movements. Now, the family have revealed that Miss Inglis has been moving her arms, legs and feet and is ‘willing herself to move and attempting to make her body do what she wants’.
According to Mr Inglis, his daughter has a ‘look of determination on her face, one he recognised from the time she was small’.
Miss Inglis was flown from Vietnam to a hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. Last night her family said she had undergone an MRI scan and they are considering the best way to bring her home.
Yesterday her sister Stacey revealed the family now have ‘phenomenal hope’ that Miss Inglis will recover after showing ‘huge progress’.
She said: ‘We hope and pray that positive news keeps coming, though we try not to get overly excited. Both her eyes are nearly now open wide. I’m walking around the house not knowing what to do or say – the fact she’s started to wake up is amazing. I’ll probably just cry when I see her. We’ve been apart for too long.
‘My parents seem so happy that she’s responding to voices and following movement. They were ecstatic. I’ve never heard them so chirpy.’
She said that physiotherapists were now working with her ‘very strong-willed’ sister to get her moving again. Stacey said the family had taken ‘massive strength’ from her recovery, adding: ‘She will definitely beat this.’
Plans are now being put in place for Miss Inglis to fly home, although she will have to pass several more medical assessments before she can take the 12-hour flight from Bangkok.
A GoFundMe page set up for the Inglis family topped £296,000 after Miss Inglis’s travel insurance expired and the company refused to pay her medical bills of around £110,000 to date.