Cathy Warren, from Hampshire, was celebrating her 28th birthday on a girls’ trip to Fethiye, Turkey, in September last year when everything changed in an instant.
The group had plans for a birthday dinner that evening, but Cathy never made it to the restaurant. What started as a fun night out quickly became a medical emergency that would alter her life forever.
“We were walking to dinner and we’d just taken some pictures […] and suddenly I couldn’t walk,” she recalled.
“My legs wouldn’t move, so my friend put me on a sun lounger and went to get help.”
When hotel staff saw her struggling, they initially assumed she was intoxicated and brought over a wheelchair. But once she arrived at the hospital, doctors quickly discovered something far more severe: Cathy had suffered a stroke.
When she woke up, she was left completely shocked. The left side of her body was paralyzed, and to her surprise, her familiar southern English accent had vanished overnight.
“I don’t think my voice is ever going to be the same,” Cathy said, explaining that her voice still doesn’t sound the same even after months of therapy.
Specialists believe the sudden change may have been influenced by her brain injury and her mother’s Thai accent, which Cathy grew up hearing. Even after completing months of speech therapy, her original voice hasn’t returned.
“I feel like I lost part of my identity,” she admitted, describing how hard it’s been to adjust to the new sound of her voice.
“I needed three people to walk at first… I’d say it took 10 months to get to the point where I could walk independently,” she explained, saying that recovery was long and exhausting but she’s grateful to be walking again.
Unfortunately, doctors have told Cathy there’s no guarantee that her original accent will ever return, though she continues to hope for further progress in her recovery.
