20/20

I didn't like that they pretty much only focused on whether or not she was faking things. They really didn't focus on anything other than the accent. It doesn't seem like common sense to me that she would fake an accent. What does she have to gain from it?

It's good that chronic Lyme is getting some publicity lately, but I wish they would focus more on treatment, current research and helping people rather than determining whether or not people are faking their symptoms.

I think it is nice that Lyme is getting some media attention. However, it seems that they tend to focus on the usual cases (as was demonstrated in the 20/20 segment). I feel it would be more beneficial to highlight the illness as a major health care problem for many/most of those that become infected so that the audience isn't left with the impression that this was just an atypical case and that Lyme disease isn't a serious illness. Just my 2 cents.

I did think it portrayed Lyme in a negative way. It lumped it with psychological illnesses. I did appreciate that the girl said she wasn't speaking a foreign accent, that she had a speech impedient that flared up sometimes.
So, I was a little dissapointed...I think they needed to have more examples. The woman at the end with the hair loss, I felt sorry for her struggle but enjoyed the happy ending of her using her condition to show compassiona and educate.

Hi, I know of a condition called "pseudo foreign dialect" that occurs, though very rarely, in persons who have had a stroke.

After a lesion in the brain's right hemisphere, the speech sounds like the person has an accent that they never had before. In my work as a speech-language pathologist, I've seen 3 cases in 24+ years. Two of the people sounded as though they were from Jamaica, and the other one sounded German. I would suppose that, if a person from Jamaica heard them, it might not really sound to them like a Jamaican accent. But it sounded like that to us folks in Alabama.

I would guess that this girl's speech disorder could be attributed to lyme encephalopathy...? The speech disturbance as a fluctuating symptom of that? Like many symptoms, for many other people, her symptom flared (speech changed )when she was over-tired.

I was hoping for a more enlightening or educational type approach from that show, but it seemed somewhat sensational - sort of a hodge podge of unusual disorders all on one show. One thing struck me, as it probably did most of the people who are members of this group: when she pulled, out from under her bed, a plastic tub full of medications. Ha! Looked too familiar...