A British woman has been left speaking random Italian after undergoing surgery to remove a blockage in her brain caused by a stroke.
Althia Bryden, 53, had never visited Italy nor studied the Italian language, but now fears her new accent is permanent and feels as though she has “lost her identity.”
“I feel like someone is impersonating me,” Bryden told Great Britain News.
Doctors suspect she may be experiencing a rare condition known as “foreign accent syndrome.”
Bryden was discharged after her stroke on May 14th but was later readmitted in late July for surgery. The stroke, caused by a rare blockage in her carotid artery, left her unable to speak or use the right side of her body. “The only thing I could do was point,” Bryden said.
She eventually regained her ability to speak, but her voice took a surprising turn. “It came completely out of the blue…but the more I spoke, the more confused we all became,” she explained.
Her husband Winston was left “speechless” at her sudden change in accent, while their son had to excuse himself to laugh at the unexpected transformation, the family shared.
However, Bryden does not find the situation amusing. “I feel like a clown with an upside-down smile that people are watching perform,” she said. “They are laughing, but I still have an upside-down smile.”
“It’s very sad. Everything is different, even my body language is different,” she added. “People aren’t meeting the original me, I don’t know who I am.”
While Bryden is grateful for recovering from the stroke, she still wakes up each day hoping her old voice will return. “I’m still looking for the person I was before,” she said. “Where do I go to find the button to switch this stuff off?”
