Kath Lockett was left unable to speak after suffering from a rare brain condition in 2006.
Ms Lockett shared her experience of developing Foreign Accent Syndrome on ITV’s This Morning.
She told Phillip Schofield and Amanda Holden: "It started as just a lisp... and then my voice started to go like an alien. I was in hospital and they thought I had a tumor.”
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When her voice returned, Ms Lockett found out she had developed what sounded like a foreign accent.
She said: "I feel like I’ve been robbed - now I’m either Italian, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish. I have no homeland now – I want to go home.
"I’ve got a speech impediment. In your head you’re playing solitaire and you’re placing the words in the right order of what you wish to say.”
Ms Lockett added: "I’m on here today to give other sufferers a voice. It is not a headline in a newspaper, it is bigger than that. You don’t realise what it is until it is gone. Just think for one moment if you lost the voice that you have today."
Professor Rosemary Varley appeared on the chat show alongside Ms Lockett to explain a bit more about the condition.
She said: "We don’t understand a lot about Foreign Accent Syndrome because it is very rare and cases are very sporadic.
"We take fluent speech for granted until it goes awry. It is one of the most complex speech movement behaviours in the body."
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