Cathy was left seriously ill after feeling unwell while out celebrating her birthday in Turkey
A woman says her life ‘changed forever’ when she suffered a stroke on a girls’ trip abroad – and woke up with a Thai accent. Cathy Warren went on holiday to Fethiye, Turkey, celebrating her birthday with friends and planned to go out for a birthday meal.
While walking to dinner she was hit with a wave of dizziness before her ‘legs stopped working’ and she was unable to walk any further. Cathy says she hadn’t experienced any other symptoms other than a ‘bad headache’ earlier in the day which she blamed on heat stroke.
Her friend called hotel reception for help and Cathy was rushed to hospital where she underwent several scans that revealed she’d had a stroke. The 29-year-old woke up in hospital with the left side of her body paralysed and was stunned to hear that her Hampshire accent had changed to a Thai one.
Cathy says she feels like she’s ‘lost part of her identity’ after being diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome. The financial administrator says she’s half-way through her recovery journey and has learned to walk again, but doesn’t know if her British accent will ever return.
Cathy, from Basingstoke, Hampshire, said: “I’d been sunbathing that day and it felt like I had heat stroke. I went to bed and I had a really bad headache, so we just thought it was heat stroke. We were walking to dinner and we’d just taken some pictures […] and suddenly I couldn’t walk.
“My legs wouldn’t move, so my friend put me on a sun lounger and went to get help. The receptionist came back with a wheelchair and they just thought I was drunk. They took me to my bedroom and I needed the toilet but I had to crawl because my legs wouldn’t work.
“I was crawling on the floor and my friend was scared so she called reception again. They came with an onsite doctor then they took me to hospital and they did some scans which showed that I’d had a stroke.”
In March 2025 Cathy was diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome – a rare condition where a person’s speech takes on an accent different from their usual one and which people can think sounds ‘foreign’. Cathy has since undergone speech therapy but says that her accent still sounds ‘foreign’.
Cathy said: “I don’t think my voice is ever going to be the same. I used to have a British voice but I woke up and my accent was different. My mum’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.
“The doctors think it’s because of my mum, she has this accent as well, and because it happened abroad. I finished speech therapy now but my voice has stayed the same. The doctors don’t promise that it will come back – it’s really rare. I feel like I lost part of my identity.”
Cathy spent a month in hospital in Turkey before she was declared fit to fly by doctors and was allowed to return to the UK in October 2024. Once back in England, she spent a further two months as an inpatient in hospital followed by three months of rehabilitation where she had to learn to walk again.
Cathy said: “I needed three people to walk at first, it was probably five minutes per day for a month. I had to learn to walk more with different aids, first a tripod, then a crutch and now I can walk independently. I’d say it took 10 months [until Summer 2025] to get to the point where I could walk independently.”
Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare condition where a person’s speech takes on an accent different from their usual accent and which other people can think sounds ‘foreign’. Most case reports describe foreign accent syndrome starting after a stroke or other brain injuries or diseases.