Christmas miracle: Injured judo star Stephanie Inglis reflects on her journey back to health

Nearby sits another smiling judo player as Stephanie Inglis reflects on her remarkable journey: one that has seen the Commonwealth Games silver medallist battle back from the brink of death following a horrific motorcycle accident in Vietnam.

The 28-year-old was teaching English to underprivileged children when her life was turned upside down. "I remember teaching that morning," she says. "The topic was 'on the farm' and I had spent the last 20 minutes of my two classes playing pin the tail on the donkey.

"It was a lot of fun. I went to get my lift home and the next thing I remember was waking up in hospital in Edinburgh five or six weeks later."

Stephanie was travelling back from work by motorbike taxi in the north-east province of Quang Ninh on May 11 when her skirt is believed to have become tangled in the wheel. Dragged from the seat, she suffered a serious head injury and fractured her neck in two places.

Her parents Robert and Alison arrived in Vietnam to discover Stephanie had been refused medical treatment due to a disputed clause in her travel insurance policy. As their daughter's life hung in the balance, her childhood friend Khalid Gehlan alerted the world to her plight with an impassioned plea on a crowdfunding website.

The public rallied to raise £327,892 towards Stephanie's medical bills and repatriation. Still in a critical condition, she was transferred to a hospital in Bangkok where she spent several weeks in a medically-induced coma. Stephanie was finally flown home to Scotland on June 12.

In the months since, she has undergone a gruelling rehabilitation that has included learning to walk and even talk again. Initially Stephanie couldn't lift or turn her head because the neck muscles had atrophied as she lay bed-ridden.

When we meet, Stephanie is upbeat, having had news that her final major surgery has been scheduled for next month. "I'm feeling really good," she says. "I'm making progress and seeing lots of improvement with all my rehab.

"I'm happy because I have an operation date. They are putting a titanium plate into my head where the skull used to be to help protect my brain. That is the last major thing and then I can start moving on fully with my life."

Christmas is always a special time among the close-knit Inglis clan, she says, but as their annus horribilis draws to a close, this one will undoubtedly feel even more magical.

Today Stephanie and younger sister Stacey, 26, have donned eye-catching festive jumpers for our photographer. Amid much giggling, they recount the time they tried to cajole Robert, 54, into wearing a jersey with a natty elf design – which he swiftly returned to the shop after Christmas. The builder and judo coach rolls his eyes in mock horror as his daughters joke about buying him a replacement.

There's more guffawing as Alison, 53, recalls the year the tree toppled over and trapped her underneath. Having finally wriggled free, she was met with the sight of her family bent double with laughter as they captured her misfortune for posterity on their mobile phones.

Stephanie – a self-described super fan of all things Disney – follows my gaze as I admire the decorations, explaining how the pretty tree ornaments were lovingly collected on various family holidays to the Orlando theme park.

She's incredibly sweet and softly spoken, although when we sit down to chat there is no mistaking the flashes of grit which fuelled her rise through the international judo ranks since taking up the sport aged four.

It is that same dogged tenacity which saw Stephanie beat the odds from being given only a one per cent chance of survival by doctors in May to now being told she is on track to make an almost full recovery.

Stephanie rose to prominence during the summer of 2014 when she was part of the Team Scotland judo contingent that claimed a record-breaking 13-strong medal haul at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Stephanie won silver in the women's -57kg weight class, and describes the Games as "the best two weeks" of her life. Afterwards she began to work towards the Rio 2016 Olympics, but an injury requiring knee reconstruction surgery derailed her preparations and made qualification unlikely.

It was a huge disappointment, but Stephanie seized the opportunity to pursue fresh challenges. When she received a chance email about a job teaching English in Vietnam, it seemed the perfect way to try something new outside her comfort zone.

She departed for her adventure in early January. Unbeknown to Stephanie, however, a clause in her multi-trip insurance policy only provided cover for up 31 days in any one country. By the time of her accident, she had already been in Vietnam for four months.

A frantic early-morning telephone call to her parents from a fellow teacher in Ha Long Bay broke the news that Stephanie had been hurt. At that stage Robert and Alison didn't know the extent of their daughter's injuries. Nor did they realise that, with her insurance policy rejected, Stephanie had been taken off all life support and left in the back of an ambulance outside the hospital.

When they arrived in the capital Hanoi, the couple were rushed to a nearby office. "We were looking around and asking: 'Where's Stephanie?' because we thought she was going to be there," says Robert. "But all they said was: 'You need to sign the paperwork.'

"A phone call was made to say: 'Bring her down.' I asked: 'What do you mean, bring her down?' They said: 'Oh, don't worry, she's on her way, we just couldn't move her before,' and it was explained that now we had signed the paperwork to take care of the cost, she would be transported.

"We were told it might take six hours as they would need to drive really slowly to Hanoi because Stephanie had a head injury. In fact, it took three hours and 20 minutes …"

Robert winces at the thought of his critically ill daughter being jostled around on the bumpy and twisty roads. "It was really scary when we got that information," he continues. "We were actually at the hospital before she got there.

"When we first met the doctor, who spoke very little English, all he said was: 'Death.' Stephanie was lying on the bed with all these tubes and wires attached.

"The doctor said 'fusion, trauma' and showed us scans that didn't mean anything because we're not doctors and used all these medical terms we didn't understand. He kept saying: 'No money, no medical.' We took out a Visa card and told him: 'That will pay for whatever you need to do.'"

Alison continues the story. "We have since found out that if they had got her to safety in the first few hours, Stephanie wouldn't have gone through any of this," she says. "If within the first six to eight hours after the accident she had been taken to hospital in Bangkok or Singapore, they would have put in a small shunt – a drain – to relieve the pressure on her brain.

"The area between Stephanie's skull and brain filled with blood which meant, when the brain swelled due to the injury, it had nowhere to go. That quite quickly began to have a serious impact."

Eventually, it was agreed that Stephanie was stable enough to be transferred to Thailand for further treatment. It was in Bangkok – almost four weeks after the accident – that there came the first sign of hope when she partially opened her left eye for the first time.

At first Robert thought he had imagined it. "Just to see her move felt amazing because we had been waiting for so long," he says. "When she opened her eye I thought: 'Did anyone else see that?' Then she did it again and I rushed out to get the nurses who all came running in. There was a few days with the eye half opening and then closing, but that wee bit of movement gave us hope.

"There was more signals when her legs started jumping and moving. The other eye eventually began to open up too. There was a lot of joy in those moments."

Stephanie, listening quietly and intently as her parents talk, takes up the thread. "I don't remember any of that," she says. Her first post-accident memory is waking up at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, disorientated and unaware of what had unfolded.

"When I came round it was so strange. I remember opening my eyes and thinking: 'Where am I?' I knew I was in a hospital from the surroundings but I had no memory of why and how I got there. My mum and dad told me I was in a motorcycle accident.

"It was a bit hard to take in because I had no flicker of any memories at all. I kept thinking: 'Is this real?', 'Is this all a bad dream?' and 'How can this have happened if I have no memory of it?' That was scary and took me a while to get my head around."

Stephanie's physical fitness coupled with the mental toughness that is key to being a top judoka would prove crucial. "My doctors have said that because I was so physically fit and strong beforehand it helped with my recovery," she says.

"Being an athlete, I have always had goals and targets I'm constantly working towards. I have been doing the same with my rehab. It helps me to keep pushing forward."

That strong-willed temperament saw Stephanie overcome countless obstacles as she fought back to health. "When I was in hospital in Vietnam I got double pneumonia and septicaemia," she says. "I also had a DVT [deep vein thrombosis] the full length of my left arm."

Part of her skull had to be removed to relieve the pressure on her brain. An untreated cut on the back of her head became infected and developed into an abscess. "I had quite a few head operations," she says. "Although those were all while I was still in an induced coma so I wasn't aware of them at the time."

Stephanie believes it is unlikely that the missing memories, which could have led to post-traumatic stress disorder, will surface. It is a thought that brings some comfort.

"The doctors say because I wasn't conscious and in the induced coma for so long, that I wasn't there for the memories to be made and shouldn't have any flashbacks. That means it won't disturb me in the future, which is a good thing."

Her long blonde locks were shorn to allow the surgeons to operate. Today, Stephanie sports a cute elfin style which only further emphasises her expressive green eyes and warm smile. Even so, she admits to often doing a double take when catching sight of her reflection.

"I've never had short hair," she muses. "It has always been long so it feels a bit strange. I'm looking forward to it growing back – I do miss my long hair."

Throughout her recovery Stephanie has remained focused on making a judo comeback. "I will have a slow return to sport and see how it goes," she says. "I plan to take my time because there is no rush. My long-term goal is to compete in the next Commonwealth Games that has judo, which is 2022."

However, Stephanie concedes it won't be easy. When a doctor said recently that he wouldn't certify her as being fit enough to return to competitive judo, it proved a crushing blow. According to Robert, his normally stoic daughter refused to get out of bed for days afterwards.

"It did cut me deep because judo has been my whole life," she says. "For someone to say I would never do it again? Judo is what is keeping me going and helping me to stay upbeat and positive. I know how far off I am from getting back to the level of fitness I had before, but for someone to say 'that will never happen' makes you wonder what is the point in doing all this?"

Ultimately, though, it has only served to harden her resolve, with Stephanie determined to prove any doubters wrong. "The doctors have said I won't get back into competitive judo, but they also gave me a one per cent chance of survival and now they are talking about a 100 per cent recovery.

"So, as much as I will listen to them and take their advice on board, they can't tell you what to do with your life. You have to take control for yourself. I'm not going to be stupid with it, I'll be smart and see how my body responds.

"I might not get back into sport, but I owe it to myself to try. I don't want to look back in 20 years and wonder 'what if?' and think if only I had tried harder that I could have been selected for competitions and won a few more medals. I would regret that more. I want to give it a shot."

Throughout our conversation Stephanie reiterates her immense gratitude to those who contributed to help pay for her medical care, saying that the scale of generosity from people across Scotland and around the world was overwhelming.

"I can never thank Khalid enough for what he did or all the people who donated. If it wasn't for those donations I wouldn't be here today. That is a horrible thought, but it is true."

Yet, Stephanie retains only fond feelings about her time working in Vietnam. "I have never regretted going," she says. "I really enjoyed it. I loved working with the kids because it was so much fun. I only had three weeks of teaching left. The sad part is I never got to say goodbye to the kids. I find that upsetting. I would definitely go back to Vietnam – I think I owe myself that."

Christmas Eve is her favourite day of the year, says Stephanie, and she is wishing for snow. She will be up bright and early tomorrow to exchange presents with her loved ones.

"Dad will make Christmas dinner and we'll all eat too much in the afternoon," she grins. "Then usually it's a case of whoever got the best DVD in their presents, we will stick that on and watch as a family. There will be a game of Monopoly at some point. Once we get the board out we can sit there and play for hours. We're all super competitive."

Their excitement is palpable, but the Inglis family are all too aware of how close they came to having an empty place at the dinner table this year. No one more so than Stephanie herself.

"It is a scary thought to think that I almost died this year," she says. "That is a crazy thing to get your head around. Now if something comes my way – an opportunity – I will say yes and do it.

"I want to get back to how I was living my life, but even more so chase what I want to do because it was nearly all over for me. I've been given this second chance and I want to make the most of it."