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News-Sun photo by KATARA SIMMON Paula Westberry has puzzled doctors, her family and herself by acquiring a foreign accent after a stroke last October. Raised in Boston with a northern twang to her speech, she suddenly began to speak with a Russian accent, and some months later, just as suddenly began to speak with a Cockney English accent. She is one of only 39 individuals world wide known to have this discomforting physical anomaly. And no one knows what will happen next.

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published: Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Living a mystery

By CHRISTOPHER TUFFLEY

christopher.tuffley@newssun.com

SEBRING -- There are mysteries in this life -- fascinating, tantalizing, sometimes heartbreaking mysteries that inspire amazement and hold us enthralled.

Paula Westberry, who holds two doctorates in nursing and is the administrator of Total Home Health, is the subject of such a mystery.

But be aware as you enter this tale. Remember it is one thing to hear a story -- another thing altogether to live it.

It started in the fall of 2007. For a period of about three weeks, Westberry began to find it difficult to enunciate her Ps and Cs; then she began to seriously stutter.

She felt enough off center that she sought out medical advice. She and her doctors were well aware something was going wrong, but answers eluded them.

Her condition worsened.

Appearing before a group of important executives, Westberry suddenly found herself unable to make either the P or the C sound at all. She came to the phrase "Pay for performance," in her presentation and got stuck, unable to speak. Her colleagues covered for her, but she was deeply shaken.

Shortly later, on Oct. 9, 2007, she was in her office at work when she was struck by a stroke. All she remembers is excruciating pain and ending up in the hospital.

In the hospital she was only able to stutter. She suffered from what is called expressive aphasia -- meaning she could recognize objects, even write their names on paper, but she could not say their names out loud.

Then, slowly, that eased. She began to talk haltingly, without verbs. That quickly evolved into a type of Southern drawl.

And this is where the mystery comes in.

Westberry -- born and raised in Boston, a member of a family that traces itself back to England and the earliest days of the nation, in fact to a time before the United States of America was the United States of America -- awoke one morning with a spot-on Russian accent, an accent so incredibly accurate that Russian speakers couldn't believe she didn't speak the language -- which she didn't, not even the word "Da."

And she didn't just have an accent, but the vocabulary and syntax as well. Worst of all, there were personality changes.

Westberry, who had always been reserved with outsiders, suddenly became flamboyant, outgoing and vivacious. So much so that her friends called her Natasha.

Those closest to her no longer recognized her voice, or her behavior.

And neither did she.

Doctors asked for a speech sample from before the stroke. She took them her wedding video. Then as they all listened, she broke into tears hearing her own voice as it had sounded before.

Dealing with the physical changes and accepting the new accent were the least of her problems.

Most of the doctors she saw thought she was experiencing a psychological problem, not anything organic. This only made the situation more frustrating, especially when the doctors didn't pay attention to what she told them.

Then Westberry came to the attention of Jack Ryalls, a professor of communicative disorders at the University of Central Florida.

He was able to diagnose and explain her condition, which is both rare and puzzling.

Called Foreign Accent Syndrome, only 39 people are known to suffer it.

Always the result of a stroke or head trauma, the people who suffer from this syndrome suddenly speak their native language with an accent.

For example, there has been a case of a Japanese woman speaking Japanese with a Korean accent; a Spanish woman speaking Spanish with a Hungarian accent; and a British woman speaking English with a French accent.

It was first reported in 1941 during World War II when a Norwegian woman was hit by shrapnel and began to speak with a strong "foreign" accent. Unfortunately for the poor woman, that accent was German and she was ostracized by her neighbors.

Westberry isn't in as sensitive a position, but she reports the same sense of isolation and insecurity. The voice is a powerful expression of who a person is; a tie to where he or she is from. To have that shoring line cut -- especially when the voice can no longer be recognized, or worse, remembered -- is painful indeed.

And there is physical pain as well. She lives daily with a powerful jack-hammer, she says, pounding away in the left side of her brain.

Westberry's prognosis is uncertain.

Asked to take part in a documentary produced for the Discovery Channel, Westberry started feeling odd the night before the interviewers were to arrive.

That morning, the Russian accent began to shift to a southern drawl. By the time the film crew arrived she was speaking in a strong Cockney accent, once again including vocabulary Westberry had never heard before.

For example, at one point she heard herself talking about a squibley mess.

An Englishman standing nearby heard her and remarked on the word squibley -- "Oh, my goodness," she says he said. "I haven't heard that word for years."

Turns out it comes from Scotland and it means all fouled up, just as Westberry had used it.

Still, despite the shifts in accents, and the fact that Westberry has been dealing with this for nearly 10 months now, she just as easily might wake up tomorrow back to her old self, or with yet another accent. Her first words every morning are an adventure, is her old self back, is there another woman waiting to be heard from.

The uncertain future bothers her, as does the fear of another stroke. But in spite of that she keeps herself on an equal keel by steering a course set on Jesus and the Lord. She credits her church, Christ Fellowship, and her fellow parishioners with the prayers that lift her up and ease the pounding in her head.

She also leans on her husband, Chuck, for support. His sense of humor has helped her keep perspective.

After all, he tells her, thanks to her ailment, he has had three wives.