BUCKEYE, AZ (KNXB/CNN) - Imagine going to sleep and waking up with a foreign accent.
It's not a joke -- it really happens and for one Arizona woman, it has happened to her three times.
"Who would do this for attention? I don't know," Michelle Myers said.
Myers, a former Texas beauty queen, has never left the USA.
Three times, Myers has gone to sleep with blinding headaches and woken up with different accents - Irish, Australian and British for the past couple years.
"They send in the psychiatrist at the hospital and make sure you're not a loon," Myers explained.
Not crazy, not faking it, she was diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome -- a rare condition that usually accompanies a stroke, neurological damage or an underlying health issue.
"When I was a little girl, I used to always go to my mom and say my bones hurt," Myers recalled.
Myers also has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. It causes bruising and painful joints. From what her doctors can tell, it turned her British.
Looking back at how she used to be is difficult.
"I guess you still have it in your head. I feel like a different person. The person I am now has been through so much compared to this person here," she said while looking at an old video of herself speaking in an American accent.
Even so, her outlook is sunny. She’s always surrounded by her seven kids and their music. But she wonders if the sounds of her voice will ever change again.
According to the University of Texas at Dallas, cases of foreign accent syndrome have been documented around the world and have happened to people who speak a number of languages.
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