"On March 7, 2010, something strange happened in Plymouth." "Local resident Sarah Colwill suffered a severe migraine and was rushed to hospital." "I can never forget it, the person that you love, just laying in front of you." "Even the doctors around you saying, "We don't know what to do."" "What happened next, nobody could predict." "Sarah Colwill from Devon spoke with a strong West Country lilt..." "How would you feel if you woke up one morning and your usual speaking voice had gone?" "She literately woke up, opened her mouth and it was not her voice that came out." "75, egg-a fry rice, and 55B, swee' and sour chicken Hong Kong-style, two of those." "Overnight Sarah's life changed for ever." "You do sound like you have got a very strong Chinese accent, almost like you've been living in China." "Do people ever think you're putting it on?" "She was diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome..." "Chop-a-sticks." "...a rare condition with no clear cause." "It has just been such horrible thing to go through." "For three years, Sarah has been searching for answers." "I can do quite a lot, yeah, but the one thing I can't do is fix Sarah." "Now, can science explain what has happened to her voice?" "And will she finally get back to the person that she was?" "I often wonder what people think when we out." "When we say we are sisters." "Yeah, they can see we is related, look at me quizzically like..." " "Where the hell have you been for half your life?"" " Yeah!" "Hi." "Sarah, in for haircut today." "Yep." "Do you want to have a seat for me?" "So, you live locally?" "Yeah, yeah, just up the road." "Lovely." "Have you been here a while or...?" "People automatically assume that I am foreign for start." "The first thing they think is foreign." "Then, the brain want to associate where this person is from." "Do you think I sound like I have Plymouth Accent?" "No." "Have you always lived here?" "Yeah." " All your life?" " Yeah." " And you were born here?" " Yeah." " Brilliant." " Thank you." " Take care, all right." "For 38-year-old Sarah Colwill, daily life in her home town of Plymouth has become any but normal." "When every time you open your mouth, you hear sound, you don't expect to hear or you are judged because you sound foreign, you almost feel like you are stuck in some weird social experiment." "It doesn't matter where I am in the world, I am never going to sound like a local person again." "It's almost like feeling like an alien." "People treat you like a tourist." "I am a tourist every day now." "While recovering from the attack," "Sarah's had to learn to deal with other people's reactions." "Where are you?" "Up here." "At the moment, she has the builders in." "Without being rude, we started, we had a little chuckle to ourselves." " Yes, it was bad yesterday." " It was bad yesterday." "You were talking some accent and we started really laughing, not in a nasty way, it just sounded really funny." "Yeah, it does sound funny." "I think I am a... humorous anomaly." "I've had it with Chinese restaurants." "If I sound Chinese and phone up and ask for an order, it's like they think I take the piss out of them so they put phone down." " Awkward." " Yeah." "Sarah lives with her husband Paddy." "He was with her the night her voice changed." "I was just sat in here and I was sat on the sofa that was here at the time and I just-a felt a great pain in my head and I said to Paddy, "Something wrong with my face, it feel all numb."" "My speech, I could not get my words out, they very slurry, and he said, "Something very wrong with you."" "So we phone ambulance, they come, they take all the readings and everything and they say, "We think you having a stroke."" "They rushed me up to the ho'pital and on the way up in the ho'pital in the ambulance, she say to me, "You know how you speaking?"" "And I say, "I know I have problems to speak, because it feel very slur."" "And she said, "No, you sound Chinee." ""You could get a job in the local China house or something."" "Sarah was given a brain scan." "It appeared normal with no tell-tale signs of clots or bleeding." "The hospital decided that she had not suffered a stroke, but could not tell her why her voice had changed." "She was sent home." "Do you remember that night?" "Oh, I can never forget it." "All her voice is changing and I was just reassuring Sarah maybe it is just like..." "some kind of glitch that will correct itself over time." "And just reassuring her, cos she was like, "What's going on with me?"" "And obviously I can't give her no answers and no doctors could." "So we was both just sat there, looking at each other, thinking," ""Oh, my God, what is going on?" Oh, it's a horrible feeling to feel that the person that is so strong with you, just collapses around you." "After the first attack," "Sarah suffered a further two, which left her left side paralysed." "Her movement gradually returned, but her accent never has." "How you feeling today?" "Rough." "I feel like a migraine coming on today." "Sarah has always suffered from a type of migraine known as hemiplegic." "Now, when she has one, they have a profound effect on her speech." "Now I speak-a hard... to find word... concentrate on... what I want to say, make sentence, um..." "Easier just say little word, little short..." "word what I want." "Gradually, since the last attack, the migraines have become regular and severe." "Sarah's been prescribed every major migraine drug." "None of them have worked." "How often do you have them?" "Maybe ten time a month." "I think the most I had was 28 in 31 day." "You got a headache?" "When she is in this space, sometimes she will get more and more pain and I'll give her some morphine and if that doesn't work, then the next stop is the hospital." "So yesterday, she had a good day, yesterday." "The day before, we nearly rang an ambulance, so it's like today again..." "Bit scary what to do." "I don't know whether to sometimes take her up the hospital and say, "Here, have her, see if you can find a way to sort her out,"" "instead of just, like, leaving her to, I think, sometimes, fester away." "As each migraine recedes, Sarah's speech gets easier, but her new accent remains." "She has never been given an answer as to what happened on the night her voice changed or if the migraines are part of the problem." "It is hard to come to terms with and you are always afraid it's-a going to happen again." "It's almost like something happen and you have to realise that actually each day could be your last day." "And it is really like that " "I don't know what is going to happen tomorrow." "My brain is a ticking time bomb - nobody knows what is going on with it." "Ultimately, I would like to know what is wrong with my brain." "Why does it behave this way?" "Four months after her voice changed, Sarah was given her only clue so far as to what had happened." "She was diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome." "Currently, there are only 150 confirmed cases worldwide, but, anecdotally, there are many more." "It just happens all over the world." "I've read of cases, somebody in Australia has had Foreign Accent Syndrome, they sounded Spanish." "Another one from Australia sounds Scottish." "I think there is a lady from Venezuela, she sounds South African." "There is people in Birmingham now they sound French, from Liverpool, they sound Jamaican - real odd mix up." "Sarah's built up an online community of fellow sufferers." "But she's become close to one member in particular." "'Something extraordinary happened to Kay Russell." "'After a serious migraine attack, 'she woke up with what sounds like a French accent.'" "She actually found me on Facebook and said, "I think you have..." "What same happened to you, as same happened to me."" "She had a hemiplegic migraine in January and I had one in the March." "And she sound French and I sound Chinese." "'To get an idea of how Kay used to speak, she showed me 'a DVD from a few years ago, when she worked as a sales person." "'Hello, my name is Kay Lawrence and I would like to welcome you 'to Premiere Products Insight Video, highlighting...'" "To hear the old Kay, that isn't Kay to me, you know." "The new Kay is Kay to me." "Hey, honey!" "Kay Russell is 52 and has lived her whole life in Gloucestershire." "So good to see you." "She suffers from the same migraines as Sarah and also had an unexplained attack from which she woke up sounding French." "Are you on any other medication?" "No, he stop it all, cos it not work." "Oh, I have been off medication for about 12, 13 months and I wondered sometimes the side effects?" "I am lucky as my frequence is a lot less than yours." "Kay's condition is improving." "She's been able to return to work and is about to get married." "There is still words I can't say." "God help me when I make my vowels." "It's "hubband"." "I can't get passed "hubband"." "So he will be my hubband, and I take you in marreeege or matrimoneee." "Oh, that is beautiful." "When I met Kay, up until then, I thought" "I was the only one in the world this happen to and you feel so alone." "So when someone pop up and say, "Actually I have it,"" "and then you speak to them and you appreciate that, actually, they sound foreign and they struggle with words, the same way as me, and then you can talk to them and say, "Does this happen to you?"" "And you meet someone and they say, "Where you from?"" "Do they say to you, "No, I mean originally?"" "That's what I get." "I say, "I am from Plymouth." "No, I mean originally."" "Like you are stupid and you don't know where you come from." "They must say tease you about "fly lice" and all that kind of thing." "They say to me, "Go on, make an order, ask for fly lice."" "The swear word ones, I have to be careful." "I always say now." ""You cannot", because otherwise, it come out, you "caarnt"." " I know." "You and I have both been accused of being a she devil..." " Possessed by demons." " Yeah, Yeah." " I was a Japanese boy in my past life." "Yeah, I have been French in my last life." "I was, specifically, a Japanese boy." "How do you define me to a doctor?" "Because I still find there is an element of doubt as to whether there is a mental cause and that's why I find it important to actually find out, once and for all, is this caused by brain damage, is this a psychological issue?" ""Tell me your honest opinion and stop circling around it."" " Yeah." "Whatever's happened to Sarah's brain, the problem is more complex than just her accent." "OK, so I will just say, like, introduction of who I am." "So I say, "I is Sarah..."" "Even writing a basic sentence has an alarming effect." "Actually, it gives me physical pain." "Like this side of my face now feels like I've been punched in the face." "I have got, like, proper pain in my head." "This is why I cannot write much for very long because the actual correction of the English actually gives me physical pain in my head." "It's like my brain says, "Stop!" "No more, I too tired!"" "Is ridiculous." "Scans taken at the time of the attacks showed no damage to Sarah's brain." "After that, friends have suggested everything from reincarnation to mental illness, to explain her new accent." "Today, she's going to see Professor Nick Miller, one of the world's only experts on Foreign Accent Syndrome." "There are some common threads which run through the stories of "Why me?"" "There is a lot of frustration and anger and bewilderment, as well, I think, about, "What is happening to me" ""and why isn't anybody able to explain to me what is happening?"" "It's like when somebody tell you something over and over, you begin to believe it." "So people kept saying, "You foreign, you foreign", you actually start to feel foreign." "This feeling of, "I don't belong here any more"" "leads to reactions like, "There must be some village somewhere" ""way up in the Carpathian Mountains or in the Alps where people do speak like I speak." ""If I could find this place, that is where I would feel at home again."" "You don't even know who you are any more." "It's like you trapped inside self and no-one can help you." " Mm-hm." "You just want someone to see the you inside." "OK, so first of all, just..." "Professor Miller will take Sarah through a series of tests designed to tell if her accent is caused by a psychological or neurological problem." "Explain to us what is going on in the picture there." "Lady forget tap on." "Boy fall off stool while get cookie." "Can you say for me, the word "pea"?" "Pai." "Can you make that closer to a "pea" rather than "pai"?" "Pai, pai, pai..." "'Your brain, all the time you are speaking, 'it's making thousands of computations and calculations, at any one moment, 'about the way you alter the level of your tongue, 'the position of your tongue, closure of the lips, that breaks up" "'the sound waves and produces what we hear' as "P" or a "T", so the back of your tongue comes up, closes off the airstream and then releases it again and you hear "C"." "Or you close your lips together and stop the airsteam and release it - "P"." "OK, they are relatively easy words, "pea" and "tea" and "key", what about the word "chopsticks"?" "Can you say the word "chopsticks"?" "Chop-a-sticks." "Can you try and get the chop... sticks?" "Chop-a-sticks, chop-a-sticks." "For people with Foreign Accent Syndrome, the brain is having difficulty calculating the range of movement, the speed of movement, the coordination of movement." "But the changes are more subtle than you hear in a speech disorder." "In Foreign Accent Syndrome, the ear of the listener, more than the mouth of the speaker, is the key thing because the ear of the listener hears the distortion to the sounds or different sounds coming out." " Tractor." " Tract-a-tor." "'But instead of associating those with a speech disorder, 'associates them with foreign-ness.'" "What about "Methodist Episcopal"?" "Mefodis Episopaw." "'The cause of Foreign Accent Syndrome' is either due to some neurological condition - stroke head injury, or there is a psychological origin, so, for some reason or another, the person's behaviour has altered and they now" "consciously or non-consciously are speaking with this different accent." "And I guess one of the things we have been trying to look at this morning is, are the kind of difficulties that you are having on different kind of words or different kind of tasks, is that in keeping" "with what we'd expect from a stroke or some similar kind of event in the brain?" "And I guess the evidence from a speech point of view certainly points to, yes, there's something neurologically different about your brain functioning now, in response to whatever happened." "I know I have Foreign Accent Syndrome." "I gather from today I can be certain I have brain injury." "I would like to know, can you fix that?" "Is there any therapy that can help-a me improve that problem?" "Yeah, well, it wouldn't be an overnight fix, I don't think, because the way brain reorganises itself or repairs itself after damage isn't an overnight thing, usually." "When something happens to the brain, we can't put the clock back to how things were before and rehabilitation usually takes lots and lots of repetitions." "It would be a choice for you, well, "Have I got the motivation that I would want to do these exercises intensively?"" "to fix it to a degree which is going to make you happy?" "He say my test results show is a neurological brain damage." " Test can confirm this." " And does he think there is any cure for it?" "No, I could improve my ability through speech therapy, but the part of brain that is making it a problem cannot be fix." "Brain damage, they're two big words." "Yes." "I still hope a doctor going to come along with a magic pill one day and just make it right." "There is-a no more magic." "And I still don't think Paddy has come to terms with that." "Three years later, Sarah is only just finding out now, you know, what condition she has got." "So for three years, she has had to... we have had to surmise what..." "what it could be." "They have said Sarah has got..." "brain damage which I am not 100% completely, yeah?" "Because I still think they haven't not enough tests." "In two months, Sarah has an appointment for a state-of-the-art brain scan that may show where the damage lies." "Until then, she's been offered speech therapy and is desperate to track down recordings of her old voice to take along." "I am actually from Plymouth." "My old accent way Plymouthian and then I had a brain, like a..." "As she has no home videos, Sarah's contacting her insurance company and bank to see if they have ever taped her calls to them." "'One moment, just one moment.'" "They probably think they've got some nutter on the phone." " 'Hello, is this regarding an accident?" "'" " No." "'Good afternoon, this is Mark in customer services, how can I help?" "'" "I am after any recordings you have of my voice prior to March 2010." "'OK, why is that?" "'" "I had a very bad migraine in March 2010 which change-a voice change and make it sound foreign." " 'Right.'" " So I would like-a to have recording of what old voice sound like." "'OK, we'd need you to send us a request in writing.'" "So can you tell do you have any recordings that predate March 2010?" "'Yes, we do record all calls.'" "Oh, excellent, OK, lovely." "'No problem, anything else I can help with?" "'" " No, that's it, thank you." " 'No problem." " 'Do enjoy the rest of your day.'" " Thank you." " 'Cheers, bye now.'" " Bye." "I am actually going to get it!" "They actually do have some!" "It's funny, I didn't think it meant so much to me." "It's so hard to explain." "It's like somebody..." "take part of you away..." "And like-a this, I get a little bit back." "Would you have gone out with a foreign girl?" "Foreign girl..." "No, because I'm English." "'Transformation...'" "Transformation... transformation." "Knowing her old voice recordings still exist has reminded Sarah of what she's lost and what she'd like to get back." "Sunshine... sunshine." "I concentrate and try to remember all the voices." "Sunshine on your fa... face." "It's like a little thin thread at the moment." "I feel the thread getting thinner." "Thank you." "I got fly in my coffee." "Flies..." "Fly, Jack, fly." "Mirruh, mirruh..." "Ruh..." "Ruh..." "Today, Sarah has her first session of speech therapy." "Put a bobble in your hair, put a bobble in-a your brown, brow..." "Tsk!" "When you practise, it's like golf." "You practise golf, you don't practise on the course, yeah?" "You go to the driving range." "You have to practise your words and then forget about it." "But what you seem to do at the moment is, every time you speak, you're practising all day, you're repeating yourself, trying to make yourself... and it's doing my head in." "Sarah and Paddy are meeting Martin Duckworth." "He has 30 years' experience helping people deal with speech problems, both physically and emotionally." "I have actually got to turn to both of you and find out what you are actually hoping." "I don't mean just you, Sarah, I mean Paddy, as well." "All therapy is hard work." "There are rare instances where somebody comes into a therapy room and you do something and it's gone." "Most of it is about understanding what is the problem," ""What I can do about it?"" "And acknowledging the biggest part, which is," ""What do I do about the things I can't do anything about?"" "She is trying to correct her speech all the time herself." "Every time she speaks, she is really trying to concentrate on what she is talking to you about, so her speech goes more slower and I think it sounds more slurred." "I know a lot what he say I do, but I think that's a lot of me playing around with the word is just because I am fascinated why I sound this way and I like to play with the sounds." "Like-a spuuud-a, spuuuud-a." "But she does that like all night, sat on the sofa, yeah?" "She'll go, "Spuuud." "Have a spuuuud." "And I go..." "When Sarah says "chips", she'll say "chip-a," ""chip-a", yeah?" "If I drop a certain letter, I don't make it up." "So I say, "You want-a fish and chip?"" " That's right." " And that OK." " I say "fish and chips" and she..." " He says, "Do I only get one chip?"" "I say, "OK, chip-a-s."" "Well, I think one will have to be honest about any sort of therapy." "I certainly could not guarantee that you would be able to, on all occasions, be able to say "spud" rather than "spud-a"." "The other side of the coin is that you are dealing with a brain which is incredibly plastic." "It is capable certainly, at your age, of moving things around so that circuits can be rewired." "But my guess is it's not about being able to speak, it's more about how you feel about your speech and about yourself." "Your identity is not what it once was." "It is having to becoming something else." "Um, I think we need to wrap this up." "If we look at a week's time, if we met up again, same time, same place." "I have spent many years working with people who come with an expectation, a hope..." "We all live on hopes, because we don't really know what we should do otherwise." "She knows something happened to her." "There is an understandable hope that she might be able to return back to where she was." "So I think this one..." "After a month's wait, Sarah's past has come a little closer." "Yeah, this the car insurance one." "The recordings of phone calls she made before her voice changed have arrived." "I have-a not actually heard my voice in conversation for nearly three year now." "'Good afternoon, thank you for calling customer services." "'My name is Sean, may I take your policy number please?" "'I am not ringing about my policy," "'I am ringing for a quote." "Do you still want my policy number?" " Yes." "'It's 112... '112." "'..723." "'Is this for the new vehicle?" "'Yes, I want to keep my existing cover." " 'I want to know, do you do commercial insurance?" " Yes." " 'I'd like a quote on a commercial vehicle, please." " No problem." "Do you want to sit here for a bit?" "'Mrs Colwill, I am going to pass you on to our renewals team 'and they will be able to do the quote for you, OK?" "'My name is Sean, may I take your policy number, please?" "'I'm not actually ringing about my policy, I am ringing 'for a quote." "I want to keep my existing cover." " 'I want to know, do you do commercial insurance?" " Yes.'" "I know it's-a me, but I feel like I want to say..." ""She make-a good speak." "She speak-a good."" "But like, that not me no more." " But it is, isn't it?" " Mm." "Yeah, like that person not there any more." "No." "I don't know what to say, Sarah." "It reminds me how much-a simple life was back then." "Just because how I sound." "When I listen to that there, it sounds like your sister." "Yeah, you don't relate to me any more." "No, I don't relate to that as your voice." "That's your sister's voice." "That's how I feel." "I'd forgotten all about this." "How cute is that?" "Michelle is Sarah's older sister." "Where was that again?" "She's always lived close by." "Always holding hands and wandering around." "She is my little sister and always smiling - cheeky, really cheeky." "Everyone thought she was so cute, so cheeky, so funny." "I was always the serious one, wasn't I?" "I often wonder what people think when we out." "When we say we're sisters." "Yeah, they can see we is related, look at me quizzically, like..." " Where the hell have you been for half your life?" " Yeah." "Yeah, that is my sister over there." "Yeah, she's fine, but thank you." "Ever since her voice changed, Michelle has accompanied." "Sarah on her weekly supermarket shop." "We never thought it would be permanent." "We thought it might take a few months, maybe even a year, giving it time to phase out and give her time to recover." "It just didn't, it kind of stuck." "Can I have a 50 gram packet of Golden Virginia and three boxes of Extra Slim Tips?" "It's not for me, I haven't got a clue." "I have noticed you, in particular, and Patrick, I suppose of your love and need to protect-a me, you speak for me and I let you." " When you go to customer services to get your stuff." " Yeah, yeah." "And sometimes I will let you speak, but I'll stand there and, looking back, I stand there in defence mode, because I am waiting for her to say something." ""She is asking for something, just get it and don't question."" "Yeah, it is like that." "I feel like I have got my bodyguard, you know." "But I think, really, I have to learn to do it myself." "You will." "When you're ready." "Miiit." "And this one." " Mit." " OK, now I will say it and see whether you can imitate what I am saying." "Meet." "Mit." "All sound same." "Miiit." "Mit." "It seems to me that we have actually hit quite a fundamental issue here." "There are long and short vowel sounds in English and you, I think, the time you spend on vowel sounds is probably rather similar, and that's another reason why you perhaps sound not English." "When she listened to those tapes of her old voice, was it quite hard to hear them?" "It's three years now." "I have near enough forgot what Sarah's voice sounds like." "It's only when she has a good day that her voice comes back a little bit and I says, "You sound like you used to" '." "So I am hoping these guys are going to come up and say, "Ah, we've come across this before" ""and this is what we can do to..."" "Because I can't fix her, can I?" "The most frustrating thing is I can fix computers, I can plaster," "I can do quite a lot, but the one thing I can't do is fix Sarah." "And that is the frustrating thing, more than anything." "So I miss her, yeah." "I miss Sarah the way she was, yeah." "Is next Thursday, all being well, OK for you?" "Therapy sessions are revealing some of the fundamental problems." "Sarah has with her speech." "Martin's given her some exercises to practise at home." "Those are the two sheets we have worked on." "I would say don't overdo these." "Just give it a little go." "I always have to do things best and I don't like to fail." "I want to sound English." " Meeet." " Mm-hm." " Mit." " Yes." "But after a week's practice," "Sarah isn't making the progress she had hoped." "I don't know how, because you learn as child," "I don't know how you learn what is long or short." "No, but that is what are going to learn, as you get new words." " But do I have to learn every word?" " Yeah." "But just sometimes, it seems too overwhelming, when I think of the multitude of words out there." "The way Sarah pronounces words is only half her problem." "Look, I don't what to say, what you would call this." "I would call this, like, a bottle pump or something." "I don't know if this have a proper name." "What would you call this?" "A dispenser." "A dis-a-penser." "So that a good thing, I learn a new word today." "She's actually lost much of her vocabulary." "The radiator in the bathroom, I just say that a radiator." "But Paddy call that particular radiator a towel warmer." "I don't know why that one a towel warmer, in particular, because they all can take towel." "If I put a towel on that, it's a towel warmer, but we don't call that one a towel warmer, we can that radiator, so I just call them all radiator." "You know, I say to Paddy, "a can of bean,"" "he say, "No can, is a tin."" "Tin can." "You say tin, I say can." "Is a tin can." "What you call that?" "You call it a ceiling fan." "Why is it a ceiling fan?" "It's attached to the light." "Isn't the best use of name for that a fan light?" "But a fan light is something else." "Waiter." "Waiter." "Waiter?" "I am getting confused today, because Paddy will say "WAI-ter"." "You say "wai-TER"." "After a month of speech therapy," "Sarah's frustrations are starting to show." "If that is the case and I have to have you say things to me in the way YOU like them said, and I think, what's wrong with the way I say it?" "You understood it, so why I have to put all this effort in to say it the way you want to say it?" "Because then you are the one who wants to say it right, so I am only standing by you and helping you to..." "I know what you say, but now I am doing it, it making me realise how much hard work is going to be." "Why am I trying to force it now to cause so much pressure on self?" "Why?" "Why, indeed?" "I was hoping it would trigger something that would just kick in, but that hasn't happen so I have got to come to terms with that, as well." "It will take time for you to decide." ""Is this the Sarah that is going to be as good as it gets?"" "Or likely to be as good as it gets." "I think that's what part of me afraid of." "At the moment, I am quite happy, because I haven't reach a point where that's it." "I haven't really had to deal with that." "The thought that I may get to a point and somebody say to me," ""Well, that it." "This as good as you are going to get."" "I don't want to hear that." "And I think this is really an important issue." "It is not for somebody else to say that, it's for you to know that." " Mm." "This is someone who is gathering a new part of her identity." "We weren't as aware, when we were five, 18 or whatever." "We accumulate things." "This is an unusual accumulation." "People, they will say," ""Her voice sounds different," but it's not stopping her communicating." "Goodness me, she can communicate!" "Where would you like her to get to?" "For her to feel... yet more comfortable with herself." "There is still an anger in there, a disappointment with herself that she can't quite do this, do that." "Not feeling too great, to be honest." "Throughout speech therapy, Sarah has still suffered from her debilitating migraines." "The whole situation is beginning to take its toll on Paddy." "I have got to keep my spirits up, so that when she comes out of her episodes, I call it, I am waiting for her and that's in a positive way, but it's really hard sometimes... you know, to maintain that." "You know, every day is a challenge." "You think you can take on things." ""Yeah, I can do this." ""I can do that," and you find, when you are doing it, it's nothing, you're just going round in circles." "Is Mummy going upstairs?" "Yeah, yeah?" "You going to go up with her?" "It is one o'clock in the morning..." "I can't sleep." "I have had three-day migraine attack." "I don't think people can understand how much it affect your relationship." "I wonder sometime do he even find me attractive any more?" "Do this voice..." "Has he got used to this voice?" "Must like he been cheated." "You marry one person and then something happen and you end up with something you were not expecting." "You kind of feel like maybe you unfair to expect them to stay with you, because you are the one that has changed." "It's been two months since Sarah was diagnosed with brain damage." "Most migraines don't cause injury to the brain, but with no medical answers, Sarah fears hers are making things worse." "Every time you have a migraine, you are afraid of what is going to take away, what is going to be left behind." "I could possibility have another severe one, who knows what it will do?" "I have no idea." "If it can change your speech and your ability to walk, the possibilities are endless." "What it can do." "Your brain controls everything." "Sarah finally has an appointment in London with a private clinic dedicated to treating problems related to the brain." "Miss Colwill, we are now ready to put you into the scanner." "I want to explain to you that this scanner is a special 3T scanner." "It is quite a strong scanner." "It is the most powerful scanner we use for diagnostic imaging, all right?" "So it will give us very good pictures of your brain and we will run some very special sequences, as well, to see if we can find something, where they weren't able to find something on the previous MRI, all right?" "Bring your head up, and down." "You OK, there?" "Three years ago, Sarah's life was turned upside down." "Something happened inside her brain which no-one has ever been able to explain." "Did scans miss something at the time of the attacks?" "Have three years of intense migraines caused any further neurological damage?" "Hopefully, today's tests will finally give Sarah some answers." "This is real-time, tongue, nose." "Professor Richard Wise is a cognitive neurologist who specialises in using neuroimaging to understand language and the brain." "So, um, your scan, we have got a whole load of sequences here that we've looked at." "We can't find anything wrong with it." "It's completely normal." "Clearly, something fairly catastrophic happened," " but it hasn't left..." " Any scars." "...any stonking great scar on your brain or even a little scar on your brain." "That begs the question, why have you got a funny voice?" "And the fact you can't see a little scar in the brain, it's still... in pragmatic, in practical terms, it was a stroke of some kind, OK." "But the fact that the scan is normal is a good thing." "Patients usually want something to be abnormal, so they can hang on to it." "As far as doctors are concerned, they prefer it to be normal." "Do you think Sarah will ever know what happened or what...?" "No, no." "Doubt it." " OK, thank you." " Great." "'I think it is very unlikely she will know." "'But I think after this length of time, three years, ' it is very unlikely she will have another event, OK?" "You know, there is no guarantees in life, but the longer you go from an episode, the less likely it is to happen again, yeah." "I had a stroke-like event, a stroke-like event, and I think if I say that to people then they won't be so confused." "I had a stroke-like event, which changed my speech and my walking and I am recovering." "I think actually it has put my mind at ease because every time" "I have a migraine, I think, "Shit, is it going to happen again?"" "You know?" "And now I don't have to worry because I had like four last week... and... and it hasn't done anything." " It's not damaged your brain." " Yeah." "To think I am actually looking at my brain is just..." "It's pretty gross, actually, to think that is inside your head." "It looks like cauliflower." "Sarah's fears about her migraines have been allayed." "She's got all the answers neuroscience can currently give." "Deep mud, tough nut, night bus." "I think that's absolutely amazing, yes." "It's been six weeks since Sarah first started speech therapy." "It felt natural the way you were doing it." "Where next?" "What...?" "She's now reached an unexpected conclusion." "I realise I am quite actually scared now of my speech changing." "I actually feel quite comfortable with my speech now." "I can say exactly what I am thinking." " May not always be perfect, but it is understandable." " Yes." "What I'm hearing, Sarah, is someone who has come to the end of journey." "No journey is ever completely at an end." "It is at this period that we have reached where you need to get to." "Hey, Paddy, guess what I can say?" "Chips." " Yeah, see?" " Yay!" "Chips, chopsticks, grandfather." " There you go, see?" " Whoo-hoo!" "It's good to see her looking happy and a bit more... a bit more confident, not feeling so insecure about the future." "I am done, I am finished." "You tend to blame your doctor." "You blame other people for the way they make you feel." "It took me a long time to accept the fact I was the problem for me." "I was the one making me feel bad." "When you start dealing with your own demons, you can actually look at yourself in the mirror and think, "I actually quite like myself." ""I wouldn't change anything, actually."" " So fish and chips." " Yeah." " Chips, I say that right?" " Yeah." "Yeah, and curry sauce." "Fish and chips and curry sauce." "Fish and chips." "'I missed her smile, I missed her being happy, but now' we laugh together, we joke together." "I've missed that so much." "I have missed Sarah over the last three years so much, so I have just been tending to get on with my own devices and all that." "Now, I feel she is coming back, I've got my..." "not just my friend" "I got my soul mate, ain't I, back?" "Hi, can I have two fish and chips?" "Yeah, anything else?" "And a curry sauce and salt and vinegar on both of them." "No problem." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"