A Brummie woman plagued by crippling migraines claims her life changed forever after she tried to sleep off one particularly brutal headache – and woke up with a Geordie accent. Why aye man!
Verity Went, 26, endures more than 20 headaches a month, having been diagnosed with chronic hemiplegic migraines at 20 and functional neurological disorder (FND) a year ago after several seizures.
She now reckons her neurological disorder coupled with a migraine may have induced Foreign Accent Syndrome. Don’t believe her? Here’s the “proof”:
Verity recalled: ‘I’d been awake for a couple of hours and I could see my vision going and I knew I was going to have a migraine. It was probably one of the worst migraines I’ve ever had in my life.
‘When I woke up my speech was quite slurred but I’m used to that when I get paralysis and then when it came back it literally went straight to a Geordie accent.
It was like I didn’t get an option to try my old accent, I just woke up straight to this. I had no symptoms of anything else changing.
‘My mam works at a doctors where I live and I messaged her saying “something isn’t right, I sound different”.
‘I got in straight away and looked at my mam to start talking and felt so embarrassed. As I started talking the doctor’s eyes and mouth were wide open.
‘She genuinely couldn’t believe it. She’d heard about it before but said it was really rare. She checked me over and said “you feel fine” and I felt normal. And it’s just stayed as it is now.’
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Verity is faking a Geordie accent as an attention-seeking exercise. But out of all the wacky things to fake for attention, why would you pick a Geordie accent? Surely it would be more interesting if she woke up with a Chinese accent or an Australian accent or a Spanish accent. Not an accent from somewhere she could drive to in a few hours. Maybe she wanted rid of the Brummie accent so bad that she just went with the accent she’s best at?
Who knows – maybe it was a side effect from that lip filler combining with the preexisting neurological disorder? Has to be more to it than just going to sleep with a headache.
This isn’t the first case of foreign accent syndrome that has left the world baffled. Here’s a more detailed look at other sufferers.
