Patients’ baffling changes after surgery – different accents, amnesia and ‘sex addict’ grandad – World News

An Australian goes to her GP and says “Doctor, doctor – I’ve woken up with an Irish accent!”

No, it’s not a cringe-worthy dad joke, but rather the incredible experience of Angie Yen, a patient from Brisbane who got a nasty shock this month after having her tonsils removed.

The 27-year-old woke up 10 days after a simple procedure on April 28, only to “freak out” when she discovered her Aussie accent had been replaced by an Irish one – despite having never visited the country.

“I spent the whole day yesterday freaking out about why this is happening to me – I went to the hospital and also called my specialist and asked them why this is happening and they couldn’t provide any answers,” she revealed in a TikTok video.

Yet Angie is far from the only stumped patient to have developed ‘Foreign Accent Syndrome’ over the years – and it’s just one of the many bizarre changes to have come over people in hospital.

From a man convinced he was Matthew McConaughey to the woman who forgot her entire life, these are the side effects they don’t tell you about on the bottle.

‘I thought I was Matthew McConaughey’

Only a True Detective could work out how footballer Rory Curtis woke up from a coma in 2012 thinking he was Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey – while also speaking fluent French.

The then-22 year old suffered a serious brain injury and a broken pelvis after his van flipped over on the M42 near Tamworth, Staffordshire – spending six days unconscious at a Birmingham hospital.

When he finally came round, Rory started chatting to nurses in fluent French even though he had not spoken the language in 12 years and only had a basic grasp of it from his school days.

“I cannot remember much but I know in my head I thought I was Matthew McConaughey,” he told Mail Online.

‘When I went to the toilet I went to look in the mirror and I was shocked because I didn’t look like him, I didn’t know what I was looking at.

He added: “At times I was in hospital thinking, ‘I can’t wait to get out of here and back to filming movies’.

“I was convinced I was him and that I had his good looks as well – I know it was hopeful thinking really.”

Doctors found he had suffered a brain haemorrhage causing blood to leak into his brain.

By the time the former semi-professional for Stourport Swifts FC left hospital, he was no longer convinced he was an Oscar winner, but retained his mastery of French for years afterwards.

“I can’t explain how it happened,” he said. “It’s incredible really. I don’t remember coming round but my family said one of the nurses was from Africa and spoke French and I was having conversations with her.

“I was just casually chatting away about how I was feeling in this perfect French accent.”

Grandad turned into sex addict and blew £3,000 on prostitute

An 81-year-old grandad found a new lust for life after a bizarre accident turned him into a sex addict – forcing his fed-up family to place him under house arrest.

Angelo De Luca was in a coma for four days in 2010 after he fell out of a plum tree at the family home in Biasca, Switzerland.

But coming round from an operation, his family were horrified to watch their devoted widower dad turn into a randy teenager again.

Sex-mad Angelo blew £3,000 of his savings in one session at a local brothel after falling head over heels for a prostitute young enough to be his granddaughter.

“Since my wife died a year ago, Leona has been there for me. It’s not only that she’s good in bed. She gives me new life force and courage. She is my friend, my only confidant,” he said.

His son Daniele later took control of his dad’s two houses and bank accounts after judges ruled that his sex addiction made him unfit to govern his own affairs.

“That woman preyed upon my father like he was a Christmas goose,” Daniele said.

Toddler addicted to cigarettes and alcohol

Three-year-old Ya Wen bizarrely picked up an addiction to smoking cigarettes and drinking beer after surviving a road crash in 2009.

Her parents said her personality changed and she began smoking up to a pack a day following a collision with a speeding van in Huizhou, China.

“She likes drinking,” said her mother Gao. “Three glasses of beer is no problem to her.”

Gao said initially her daughter would hide in a toilet and smoke her dad’s cigarettes, but then she progressed to getting them on credit from a local shop.

The store’s owner say Ya Wen would often walk away with a couple of packets.

“We thought she was buying for her father,” he later admitted.

‘I forgot my whole life and had to break up with boyfriend’

Lisa Russell was forced to break up with her boyfriend and rebuild her entire life after losing all her memories in a horrific car crash.

As the then 22-year-old, from Troedyrhiw, Wales, awoke from a three-week coma in 2005, she didn’t even recognise her own mother and Tom, her boyfriend of five months, was a stranger.

The only person who stuck in her memory was dad Carl, who explained she’d been on her way home from work when her car and another vehicle collided, injuring two people.

“I stared at my dad in shock as he gently explained that Tom was my boyfriend and that my mum was standing right in front of me,” she said.

“None of it made any sense. I had absolutely no recollection of who they were and I couldn’t explain why I’d recognised my dad but not my mum.”

Lisa had a ruptured spleen, broken pelvis and a serious head injury. Her brain had swollen so severely that doctors had put her into an induced coma so it could recover.

The doctors told her her memory would return, but after five months of failing to remember she had to make the heartbreaking decision break up with Tom.

“No matter how hard I tried, I had absolutely no idea who Tom was and how much we meant to one another,” she said.

“Worst of all, I didn’t feel attracted to him because I thought he wasn’t my type. We persevered because I hoped my feelings would return along with my memory.”

Lisa later joined the support group Headway, which helps people with head injuries, and while her memory didn’t return, she began to rebuild her life and date again.

“I used to be hung up on my long-term memory returning but now I’m more laid back about it,” she said. “I have a new life and a whole set of new memories to create. That’s my priority now.”

Mum thought she was a teenager – and that it was 1998

Baffled brain op patient Sarah Thomson woke from a 10-day coma convinced she was a teenager – not a happily married mum of three.

Hugged by overjoyed husband Chris and kids Michael, Daniel and Amy – then aged 14, five and four – the mum was forced to admit she didn’t recognise them.

The coma in 2002, caused by a blood vessel bursting in her brain, had erased 14 years – meaning Sarah thought it was 1998 and she was 19.

“I had no idea who the kids were, I thought they were someone else’s,” she said. “I told my brother ‘you’re bald’ and my parents that they looked rough.”

The huge Spice Girls fan, from Exeter, did not remember Geri Halliwell quitting in 1998 and had no memory of 9/11. She even began dying her hair again like a teenager.

Husband Chris took her to the places they had been together to jog her memory, and a month after the operation, as her memory began to return, she was able to say she loved him again – which “felt like the first time”.