Doctors were left baffled after a 94-year old Chinese woman woke up from a two-week long coma following a stroke speaking fluent English. The woman apparently forgot how to speak her native language.
Liu Jieyu, 94, had been unconscious for two weeks suffering a stroke that almost took her life. Doctors were afraid she might not wake up. Fortunately, she woke up saying, "Where am I? What is happening?", Daily Mail reported.
The doctors found out that she has lost the ability to speak her native language, Chinese. They later on discovered that the part of her brain responsible for native language got damaged by a cerebral infarction.
Family members made it clear that the Chinese pensioner was a retired English teacher. However, she stopped speaking English 30 years ago after retiring from her work. Tao Hou, a medic said in a statement, "'I can't ever remember having a case like this before but we anticipate with proper rehabilitation and rest she should regain the ability to speak Chinese. 'We assume that the area dealing with her ability to speak Chinese has been damaged, but brain cells to have an ability to repair them to a certain extent we would hope to see at least some improvement."
According to doctors she is suffering from a condition called Foreign Accent Syndrome. FAS is a speech disorder that a person suddenly speaks another language or a foreign accent after being in a coma. This is not the first case of this condition.
According to Bro Bible, a man who checked in a hotel in Palm Springs, California woke up baffled about who he was and spoke perfect Swedish. Another man named Ben McMahon from Australia woke up from a coma following a vehicular accident speaking Mandarin, a language he learned in high school.
This condition is rare but the exact reason why it is happening remains unknown.
