Marie Spendig's mother, Anja, said her daughter was improving day by day, but had no memory of the crash, or the weeks before and after.
The 22-year-old, her boyfriend Sahil Sudhir Shetty and another person left a central Queenstown bar about 3.40am on March 13 and were last seen driving on Robins Rd.
A Gorge Road Retail Centre worker found the car at 10.20am, with Marie on the ground beside it.
After emergency surgery at Dunedin Hospital, she spent 26 days in ICU on a ventilator.
She could not speak for a month, and had to learn how to walk independently again.
Her mother said she was now in a rehab hospital near Hamburg.
Her short-term memory was limited and she had no feeling in two fingers of her right hand, making everyday activities like writing difficult.
She still had a broken collarbone and torn ligaments, but her doctors had said they could not operate to repair the damage.
''At the moment, nobody can tell us if Marie is expected to make a full recovery.''
But her daughter was a ''fighter''.
Shetty will be sentenced on October 29 on a charge of careless driving, under the influence of drink, causing bodily injury to Ms Spendig.
He told police he had had five drinks before getting behind the wheel.
After the crash, he apparently cut his girlfriend's seatbelt, then hitchhiked home to Arrowtown.
A police officer answered when he rang one of the cellphones left in the car at 6pm that evening.
Ms Spendig's mother said the news of the accident began a ''nightmare'' for the family.
''We were full of fears. We flew to New Zealand without knowing if Marie would still be alive when we arrived.
''And then we were frightened about the uncertainty ... We stopped our normal lives for three months.
''This accident has changed our lives - Marie's as well as the lives of the whole family and friends.''
Her daughter had put her agricultural science study on hold to go travelling, and arrived in New Zealand from Thailand last November.
After coming to Queenstown the following month, she applied for a working holiday visa, and was due to start work the day after the crash.
She gave special thanks to the workers who found and first attended to her daughter at the crash site, and was ''so grateful'' to staff at Dunedin and Wakari Hospitals who cared for her.
They had also made ''friends for life'' with the Dunedin family they stayed with for three months.
