Texas mother, Lisa Alamia, 33 years old ends up with British accent after her jaw surgery.
She is the mother of three and was born and raised in the state.
Lisa Alamia had the jaw surgery in December last year. She had a surgery to fix a serious overbite and the operation was done successfully with minimal swelling according to Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital.
“People who don’t know me, they’re, like, 'Hey, where are you from?'" Lisa Alamia told KHOU. “I’m from Rosenberg. They’re, like, 'Where is that?' I’m, like, 'Right here in Rosenberg.' 'Oh, you’re from here? How do you talk like that?' So that’s where the whole story comes up."
Lisa Alamia developed foreign accent syndrome.
Her husband, Richard Alamia, noticed it right away as she came out of surgery.
"I said, 'Doctor is that normal for her voice?' He said, 'Oh yeah. It will go away in a couple of days,'" he told KTRK.
A story you have to hear to believe: Rosenberg woman sounds British after surgery https://t.co/TF7M0pTbWo pic.twitter.com/TEGBSCQWrm
— KHOU 11 News Houston (@KHOU) June 22, 2016
Alamia said her doctor said the voice change was “just a psychical result of the surgery and that it would go away as I healed,” according to the hospital. But months later she's still speaking in British accent.
At last she went to neurologist Toby Yaltho at Houston Methodist Sugar Land Neurology Associates, who diagnosed her with a very rare case: Foreign Accent Syndrome, or FAS.
“This is a fascinating and very rare case,” Yaltho said in a release. “Most neurologists work their entire careers and never come across FAS.” "I think as we kind of raise awareness, we might find more patients or people who have this condition and potentially (the) ability to study (them)."
The rare speech disorder was first described in 1907 by French neurologist Pierre Marie, and since then, there have been only about 100 documented cases. Other well-known cases of the syndrome have included one that occurred in Norway in 1941 after a young woman, Astrid L., suffered a head injury from shrapnel during an air-raid. After apparently recovering from the injury, she was left with what sounded like a strong German accent and was shunned by her fellow Norwegians.
Foreign accent syndrome is a rare medical condition in which patients develop speech patterns that are are perceived as a foreign accent that is, different from their native accent, without having acquired it in the perceived accent's place of origin.
Lisa hopes to become participant of the case study that can lead to a medical breakthrough.
"Advance it," she said. "(Get) more research done, more testing done."
