Her medical condition is so rare, some doctors have accused her of faking it. Photo / Sunday Night, Channel 7
Imagine talking a certain way your whole life and then one day suddenly only being able to speak in a foreign accent.
It's a condition known as Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) and only about 100 people around the world have been diagnosed with it.
It is so rare that many medical professionals often believe patients are faking it, but the reality is much more complex.
Australian woman Heather Scammell was diagnosed with FAS after suffering from a stroke about eight years ago.
Up until that point in her life Scammell had a classic Aussie accent, but from that moment on she sounded as if she grew up in Italy.
"The last thing I remember was buttering toast, and all of a sudden this very strange feeling came over me.
"I remember calling out, 'What's happening to me!' I went to push up and realised nothing is working and I tried to move my leg.
"I thought, 'Oh my god, I've had a stroke.'"
After her stroke, Scammell couldn't speak for months but when she finally did she sounded like a completely different person.
She now had a thick Italian accent, though she told the program she didn't immediately realise her accent had changed and couldn't understand why her family kept joking about her voice.
She told the program that they would make jokes by asking her to "put the pasta on" and she would get increasingly frustrated not knowing what they were talking about.
"I could hear my old voice. I couldn't understand why they were speaking to me like that," Scammell said.
"Then three days later, I hear that voice. I said, 'Oh my God, now I know why they are talking like that. I am talking like an Italian, I can't believe it!'"
FAS usually occurs after a patient suffers a stroke or a head injury where the part of the brain associated with speech becomes damaged.
About 30 percent of people diagnosed with FAS will get their old voices back. But after four years it becomes extremely unlikely.
Right now there is no cure for the condition.
Professor Jack Ryalls from the University of Central Florida, has documented 27 cases of FAS worldwide and it one of the leading experts on the disorder.
"It is the result of a legion in the brain that interrupts the connection to a stage where people start saying 'You sound foreign' or 'You don't sound like yourself'," Professor Ryalls told the program.
He likened it to a tennis player who suffers a sports injury and is then rehabilitated.
"They can play tennis again, but they don't hold the racket in exactly the same way. So they are still speaking, but with this injury [it] changes slightly the way that they speak," he said.
Because there is such a small amount of people who suffer from FAS many people in the medical field accuse patients of faking it.
"There are doctors and professionals out there that do not believe me and it makes me really angry. They say 'You want attention' or 'You have anxiety dear'," Scammell said.
"This is a very real condition. Not only does it change your voice, it changes your whole life. Before this, I was a normal everyday person doing my own thing, just like you. This could happen to you tomorrow.
"To people that think this is not a real condition, well I'm sorry, I'm living it. It bloody well is."
Elaine Davidson, one of Scammell's best friends, also suffers from the rare condition.
Just like her friend, Davidson's Australian accent completely changed after she survived a massive stroke.
"I got a lot of brain damage in the left hemisphere. When you have a right stroke, it affects the language centre of your brain," she told the program.
"It is a terrible thing when you can't even sign your own name. That affected me really terribly."
It took six months before Davidson was able to speak again and when she did she found she was switching between a French and Italian accent.
She revealed that strangers often thought she was drunk. She carries around cards that have things like her coffee order written on them to make it easier to communicate when she goes out.
American dog trainer Ellen Spencer is another person living with FAS.
About 10 years ago she went to bed with a horrible migraine and woke up speaking like a different person.
Spencer's new accent isn't so easy to pick, with people saying she sounds German, French, Scandinavian, Irish and even Japanese.
After living with this condition for a decade, she has moments where she is able to slip back into her old Californian accent.
But it takes so much concentration that she can only keep it up for a few minutes at a time.
"What's happening right now is I am holding on really tight to the single side of my brain to make the words that I want to say," she explained to Sunday Night.
"I'm getting to where I can almost do it spontaneously, but now I'm tired, so I'll start going into the accent again."
Spencer has suffered from depression as a result of her condition and the impact it has had on her life.
"It's not the voice that said 'I do' and 'Forever and always' to my husband. It's not the voice that read to my little baby when I put her to bed and said 'I love you my darling'," Spencer said through tears.
"It is a loss and I can't just snap my fingers and get it back."
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