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Her blue eyes sparkled, and a soft smile spread across Sarah Scantlin's face. Sarah belted out a series of scales and sounds after Golden Plains Health Care Center staff member Jennifer Trammell asked if she would like to practice her sounds. "La, la, la; da, da, da; so, so, so," she said. At Trammell's suggestion, she repeated the series. Hutchinson News Photo Sarah Scantlin smiles for the video camera during an interview Tuesday. Photo by Sandra J. Milburn "Why are we doing this, Sarah?" Trammell asked, then answered the question herself: "This helps you form words and strengthens your vocal...

We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill. And no one is more baffled than the GP who made the breakthrough. Steve Boggan witnesses these 'strange and wonderful' rebirths For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his...

Sarah Scantlin was knocked into a coma by a drunk driver 20 years ago has begun to speak and remember her past. Her brain was injured so badly that doctors first feared she would spend her life in a vegetative state, spending years unable to form words or make any sounds other than loud cries. A week ago Sarah began speaking and doctors have no explanation. The parents, brother and sister of Terri Schindler Schiavo hope the Florida courts will see this miracle and think of Terri. Video tape shown today on CNN Headline News of Sarah with her mother...

A US woman who has spent the past 20 years in a coma-like state has inexplicably awoken and can now speak, news reports said. Sarah Scantlin was 18 years old when, as a pedestrian, she was injured in a hit-and-run accident that left her in a semi-vegetative condition, aware of her surroundings but unable to speak or move. Since that time, she has been in a care centre in the Midwest US state of Kansas. Scantlin's parents unexpectedly received a phone call last week from the nursing home where their now 38-year-old daughter resides. However, instead of the call being...