Judo star Stephanie Inglis has spoken for the firts time since her catastrophic motorbike accident in Vietnam.
The 27-year-old was flown from Bangkok to Edinburgh earlier this week after being declared fit to fly home by medics.
He parents, Robert and Alison Inglis, said they are very confident that she would recover and thanked well-wishers and donors, who have raised more than £300,000 for her medical bills.
And it has now emerged that on Wednesday, her parents visited with one of Steph’s friends and they gently wakened Steph, who responded by saying “Hi”.
A post on a popular social media page read that her sister, Stacey, later arrived and that Steph pulled an angry expression when her sister said she would have to “get up” to take back a pair of her boots she has been using.
The statement, written by a friend, added: “While I as talking to Steph I realised she has all her memories intact, and she is alert to what is happening.
“But her body has been through so much the slightest thing exhausts her, but for just that magical moment when she smiled and said Hi, she looked exactly like the girl who last burst into my house to tell me about all the wonderful adventures she was planning.
“The first thing we learned was that Stephanie is now breathing without any assistance, however she still has the Tracheotomy in place and although she now has a speaking attachment in place this is causing her significant distress, and we will be relieved when this can be removed.
“Stephanie has now been cleared of all her infections and the hospital believes that she has fought and come through all of these, they are really happy with Stephanie and as soon as they can make her more comfortable they will.”
Stephanie, who is from Daviot near Inverness but has been living in Dunfermline, had been transferred to Bangkok from a hospital in Vietnam where the accident happened on 10 May.
Her parents flew to south-east Asia to be with their daughter.
She suffered head injuries when her skirt caught in the wheel of a motorcycle taxi and pulled her off the bike on her way to work teaching English in Ha Long.
Medics in the Hanoi hospital initially gave Steph a 1% chance of survival.
But her fighting spirit has carried her through and the future looks much more positive.
