American woman sedated for dental surgery wakes with British accent

Most of us fear walking out of the dentist’s surgery with a sore mouth and a hefty bill. But one American’s visit proved a little more traumatic – after she left with an English accent.

Karen Butler, from Toledo, Oregon, has never travelled further than Mexico, but is now coming to terms with strangers asking her ‘about bangers and chips’. The 56-year-old tax adviser was given an anaesthetic a year and a half ago while her dentist removed several teeth.

She said: ‘I woke up and my mouth was all sore and swollen, and I talked funny. The dentist said, “You’ll talk normally when the swelling goes down.”’ But while the swelling did go down, her voice did not change.

Neurologist Ted Lowenkopf, of the Providence Stroke Centre in Oregon, diagnosed her with foreign accent syndrome, a rare neurological disorder. He suspects Miss Butler suffered a small stroke which damaged the part of her brain that affects speech pattern and intonation.

The accent remained and has now transformed into a more German or eastern European sounding voice. Speaking to the Oregonian, the mother of five said her family at first treated the bizarre affliction as a joke. One daughter even recorded her mother saying the phrase, 'I am going to suck your blood' in her trademark trademark Transylvanian accent as a ring tone on her cell phone.

She said: 'When it first happened and we didn't know what it was, all kinds of ideas were handed up as possibilities. 'I'm very lucky it was not something that was devastating,' she added. 'On a scale of one to 100 this doesn't even come up to a one.' The condition is so rare in fact that only around 60 cases have been reported worldwide since the 1900's.


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