Cabaret darling Shannon Turner suffered a brain injury – and lived to sing about it.

Turner is a Philly cabaret singer who is on a comeback career swing after almost dying from a heart attack and stroke. — Photos: TNS

There's an undeniable power to Philadelphia cabaret singer Shannon Turner’s performance when she sings.

However, not many people may know that the 34-year-old American spent a good deal of her 20s in and out of the hospital, struggling with an array of autoimmune diseases. In 2012, she suffered a pulmonary embolism that left her in a coma. Later she was told she’d died three times before stabilising, receiving last rites under the assumption that she’d emerge from the coma brain dead, if at all.