A Texas woman was shocked when she woke up after surgery for a herniated disc to find her southern drawl had been replaced with a thick Russian accent.
Abby Fender, 39, has struggled with identity issues since the bizarre symptom and now has to lie about where she’s from to avoid awkward conversations.
Doctors, initially flummoxed, eventually diagnosed Ms Fender with a rare condition known as Foreign Accent Syndrome.
Some sort of brain damage typically causes the speech disorder due to a traumatic brain injury, stroke, aneurysm, or a central nervous system condition called multiple sclerosis. In some cases, no underlying cause is identified.
After receiving speech therapy to fix her new ‘Russian Minnie Mouse voice’, Ms Fender has been confronted by a new problem — she has now developed an Australian accent.
Medical experts who worked with Ms Fender have diagnosed her with the rare Foreign Accent Syndrome
Post-surgery, Ms Fender was shocked to discover her vocals were ‘paralysed’ and her Texas accent had disappeared
Ms Fender, a professional singer, said: ‘I woke up from my surgery and immediately knew something was very wrong with my voice, as I couldn’t speak with any volume.
‘Soon, I began to feel the pitch of my voice go very, very high and we called it the “Russian Minnie Mouse voice” where I sounded like a cartoon character all the time.’
Foreign accent syndrome has confounded neurologists and speech experts since it was first described in the early 20th century.
People usually develop accents over time resulting from the sound patterns in their local lingo, which is a subconscious process.
Only about 100 cases of FAS have been diagnosed since 1907. Some cases have made headlines in recent years for their peculiarity.
Last month, DailyMail.com revealed a man in North Carolina developed a thick Irish accent after cancer surgery – despite never having visited the country.
Most of the roughly 100 cases that have been reported since 1907 were a result of damage to the speech center of the brain called Broca’s area.
Located on the frontal lobe, this area is crucial to a person’s ability to articulate ideas and use words accurately in spoken and written language.
The condition is more often seen in females than males and patients typically develop FAS due to a stroke.
It can also develop as a result of developmental or psychological disorders, trauma, or tumors.
Cases of FAS may involve changes in the way people pronounce words, their syntax and vocabulary, as well as changes in the length of the vowels and tenseness.
Some people with FAS may have trouble with sounds that require you to tap their tongue behind the top front teeth, such as ‘t’ or ‘d.’ Some have trouble pronouncing clusters of sounds such as S-T-R in words like ‘struck.’
In Ms Fender’s case no incidence of brain injury has been reported. More recently, her accent has switched to Australian.
She described this condition’s major impact on her daily life, in which she’s often asked about her odd and unexplainable accent.
She said: ‘I don’t want to lie about where I’m from, yet sometimes, I do because it’s easier. Every time I do this, I feel like I’m denying who I really am and that’s not a good feeling, but I get asked: “Where are you from’ at least 10 times a day.”’
‘I remember once I said that I was Ukrainian and the other person started speaking to me in their native tongue. I had no clue what to do, so I had to confess but before the current war, this wasn’t ever an issue, as no one asked questions.
‘Now, this isn’t so simple, so I try to avoid saying where I’m from and instead, tell them what type of accent they’re hearing.’
Ms Fender underwent a battery of tests in an effort to pin down the neurological underpinnings of her condition, including MRIs and CT scans, but efforts were unsuccessful.
Her singing voice, which she had been honing since the age of 11, was also suffering. She said she was unable to sustain the same pitch as before the surgery and had taken on a different tone of voice.
There is a slight risk of injury to the spine and nerves in surgery to repair a herniated disc. The most common complication, occurring in about one percent to seven percent, is a dural tear. It happens when the thin covering over the spinal cord or meninges is nicked by the surgical instrument.
It is unclear, though, if Ms Fender had sustained a dural tear or any other dire complication from her surgery which may explain the accent. She suspected that a complication during the procedure affected the Broca portion of her brain, ‘but we’ll never know.’
A speech pathologist helped Ms Fender regain her singing pitch and relax her neck muscles enough to slip into her natural speaking voice.
She said: ‘I couldn’t believe it, as it was a miracle to hear my own voice again.’
‘It was like coming home after a very long trip, but this wasn’t to last, as only by using certain techniques such as blowing bubbles into a bottle of water using a straw, will I get my old accent back’
Despite the great strides she has made her speech therapy, Ms Fender still falls back into an accent. Lately, she said she has been speaking in an Australian accent.
She added: ‘I’m starting to feel OK with everything, but of course, my most recent change has stirred up unexpected feelings of fear and embarrassment. I don’t like not being in control or knowing what I’m going to sound like.
‘It’s very scary.’
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