By ROBIN YAPP and ANDY DOLAN, Daily Mail

Last updated at 09:02 20 January 2006

A woman who was blind for a quarter of a century has baffled doctors by regaining her sight after suffering a heart attack.

Great-grandmother Joyce Urch, 74, awoke from a coma to find her vision restored.

Doctors are describing it as a 'miracle' because they can find no medical explanation for the phenomenon.

Mrs Urch, from Coventry, lost her sight in 1979, apparently because of glaucoma. After more than 25 years, she was admitted to the city's Walsgrave Hospital with chest pains.

A few days later, she suffered a cardiac arrest and was not expected to live. But she recovered - and left doctors and her 77-year-old husband Eric astounded when she shouted: "I can see, I can see, I can see."

Mrs Urch said: "Eric came over and I said, "Oh, you've got wrinkles on your face. You must be old.

"And I said, "Well, I must be old as well then."

The last time the mother of five from Coventry could see, Margaret Thatcher had just been elected Prime Minister and Nottingham Forest were European football champions.

Now she says that every time she looks out at her garden she cannot believe her luck.

'Is that really me?'

"I love going out now. I can look around and see the trees and squirrels and pigeons. The first time you look in the mirror you look at yourself and think, "Is that really me? I never used to be like that."

"A lot of things, such as shops, have changed. Coventry has changed. There are roads everywhere where they weren't before."

Mrs Urch has seen her three great-grandchildren for the first time and last weekend celebrated her golden wedding anniversary.

Her husband, a former miner, said: "I didn't believe it at first, she was still alive for one thing and all I could think was, well, somebody up there must love Joyce.

"When she said she could see me, I said, "What colour pullover am I wearing?" She said "grey". And she was right. It must be some sort of a miracle because I never thought Joyce would ever see again."

Mrs Urch went blind after she was diagnosed with glaucoma - a complex group of disorders which involve damage to the optic nerve and can lead to permanent blindness. She is also arthritic and diabetic.

Dr Martin Been, her consultant cardiologist, said he could not explain her sight returning. Asked whether it was a miracle, he said: "It seems so. I am baffled."

Ian Murdoch, a consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, said the blindness might have been caused not by the glaucoma but by cataracts - where the lens of the eye becomes cloudy.

"The heart attack itself or the treatment she received as a result could have put pressure on her eyes, causing the cataract to drop away to the back.

"But if this was the case, I would expect Mrs Urch only to have regained unfocused sight, such as being able to perceive between light and dark."