Foreign accent syndrome

Dear International Scrubs,

Good evening. I hope you are enjoying a pleasant evening out on the porch like me. There is nothing like an open garden, green grass and squirrels dashing around getting ready for hibernation. Watching a squirrel in motion reminds me of next topic students, and that is the "foreign accent syndrome".

Not many people have heard of this syndrome, and most of those that have heard of it do not believe it exists. Well I can jolly well asure you all it does exist, because your heroic teacher (myself ofcourse) has suffered himself from this terrible plight.

The foreign accent syndrome is a rare medical condition that usually follows a severe brain injury, such as a stroke or a head injury. The syndrome causes people to speak their native language as if they had a foreign accent, for example, a true Brit with a perfect accent may speak like a yank, or a frenchman like a german! There have been fewer then 15 cases of foriegn accent syndrome reported worldwide!

Let me tell you fellows, that I too have suffered with this condition. I will let you into a secret of mine - before I became a professor of medicine, I worked for the MI5 as a spy. This was during the cold war ofcourse and I spent much time spying in the communist block. I was caught after an unfortunate incident (I will tell you about that later) and I spent 2 years in a communit jail. There I was beaten and tortured by communist guards. Do not worry my loyal readers, your professor did not disclose the secrets of our chemical and biological weaponry. I was not going to let our secrets go to the enemy, despite the punishment I took.

And even now, to this day, I wake up in the night with a sweat, and speak in a thick russian accent: "Dieee you bald british b**tard" and everything I say is with a Russian accent for a few hours thereafter. So Im afraid it is true folks, the foreign accent syndrome is real, and I suffer with it.

More recently, a geordie woman (woman from Newcastle) suffered a stroke and ended up with a Jamaican accent. The suffereing, the suffering, will God ever make it stop...

Read more about the case here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/5144300.stm

And more about the syndrome here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome

This was the prison guard that tortured me in Russia:



Do svidaniya!
Professor Scrub

The hypnopompic state

Dear eager Scrubs,

Good morning. Prof here with another valuable lesson.

Todays tutorial is on a topic that is the bane of my life. It is a condition that seems to affect all of you in my lectures and really gets on my nerve endings.

Often when I'm lecturing on such fascinating subjects such as the Krebs cycle or the stages of cell mitosis, I find many of my pupils in the hypnopompic state. It is very frustrating for a man of my high calibre to have such disrespecting students, and what is even more riling is that many of my students do not even know what this state of sleep is!

The hypnopompic state is a transitional state of semiconsciousness between being asleep and being awake and occurs just before waking from sleep (the hypnagogic state is the same thing but occurs just before dropping off to sleep). People often desribe not being able to move or speak but are fully aware of their surroundings. They may have visual or auditory hallucinations, often quite scary but are unable to vocalise their fear or scream out loud.

Most common folk suffer this bizarre state once or twice in their lifetime but my students seem to undergo this state once or twice a lecture! Let me give you an example...

A young, fair and voluptuous female student of mine turned up late to one of my award winning lectures on synapses and the neuromuscular junction. This already had me agitated to my wits end and as I headed towards the climax of my lecture, I noticed her fast asleep, head on desk. I marched up to her in anger and slammed my fist onto the desk.

She startled and stared straight at me. I asked her what I had been talking about for the last 30 minutes but she was just motionless. I told her she had disturbed my climax and she did not at all seem sorry. She did not say anything. I asked her again, and nothing. No movements, no words, just drooling - this lasted 10 seconds. Typical i thought, waste of my bloody time, sometimes I wonder why I bother with these invalids. Bring back the ruler is what I say...

I think I have developed a treatment for this condtion. For all those students in the hypnopompic state in my lecture - A rude awakening across the face with one of these should snap them out of it:

So students, if I catch you in this hypnopompic state, expect a big trout in your face - you have be warned!

An angry
Prof Scrub