A vacation is usually a time for people to let loose and relax. Similarly, 28-year-old Cathy Warren wanted a relaxing time at a dream destination. Soon, however, the dream vacation turned into a nightmare.
Keep reading to learn more.
In September of last year, Cathy Warren was celebrating her 28th birthday with a girls’ trip to Turkey’s beautiful Fethiye. However, the dreamy vacation turned into a nightmarish ordeal very quickly.
The girl group had made a plan to have a nice meal out, but it never took place. As Cathy was walking through the resort with her friends, she began feeling dizzy and suddenly felt her legs had stopped working.
“We were walking to dinner and we’d just taken some pictures […] and suddenly I couldn’t walk,” she later recalled.
“My legs wouldn’t move, so my friend put me on a sun lounger and went to get help,” she added. Earlier in the day, Cathy had brushed off some symptoms which she attributed to a heat stroke after she had suffered from a ‘bad headache.’ However, her condition quickly became worse and worse.
Initially, hotel staff suspected Cathy was drunk when they bought a wheelchair for her but soon she was rushed off to a hospital and scans quickly revealed that she had suffered a stroke.
When Cathy finally woke up, she was shocked. The left side of her body was paralyzed. And her southern English accent had completely transformed into something unrecognizable to her.
She was later diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome. This is a rare speech condition that at times affects those who have had strokes or other brain injuries. In the condition, someone’s voice can sound completely different.
“I don’t think my voice is ever going to be the same,” Cathy explained. “I used to have a British voice but I woke up and my accent was different. My mom’s from Thailand so she has a Thai accent. I would say that the accent I have now sounds like hers – it’s Thai, it’s foreign.”
Doctors think the incident has taken place because of two reasons: that Cathy had a brain injury and that her mother speaks with a Thai accent. Cathy has completed speech therapy, but her voice has not gone back to how it used to be before the stroke. She says, “I feel like I lost part of my identity.”
After her stroke, Cathy spent a month in a Turkish hospital before she flew home to Hampshire in October 2024. She then spent another two months in the hospital and three subsequent months relearning basics like walking in rehab.
“I needed three people to walk at first… I’d say it took 10 months to get to the point where I could walk independently,” she shared her ordeal.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that Cathy’s voice will be back to what it used to be.
Cases like these are rare but fascinating. Have you heard of something like this before? Let us know in the comments section on Facebook.
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