Stephen Chase, a man from near Salt Lake City, Utah, started speaking fluent Spanish after waking up from surgery. This happened despite him having only a basic knowledge of Spanish before. The first time was at age 19, after knee surgery for a football injury. He spoke Spanish for about 20 minutes before switching back to English. "The very first time it happened, when I woke up I was speaking in Spanish to the nurses checking on me," said Chase, now 33. "I don’t really recollect speaking Spanish, just people asking me to speak English and being really confused." Chase had only taken beginner Spanish classes in school and barely paid attention. The language switch happened again after multiple surgeries over the years, including sports injury operations and a septoplasty. Nurses asked questions in English, and he replied in Spanish. "In my head, I’m just speaking and can’t understand why they don’t understand me," he said. The fluency usually lasted less than an hour. He says, "I was completely fluent. I think it completely subsides within an hour." Chase now warns medical staff ahead of time so they know what to expect. He believes frequent exposure to Spanish during childhood around Hispanic friends may play a role. After the first incident, he spent two years in Chile, improving his Spanish, but said the sudden fluency after surgery felt like native-level speaking. Doctors link such cases to a very rare neurological condition called Foreign Language Syndrome (FLS). The US National Library of Medicine explains FLS as when a person suddenly speaks a second language fluently for a short time, often after brain injury, stroke, stress, or anesthesia. The cause is not clear, and the condition is temporary with full recovery. FLS is extremely rare, with fewer than a dozen cases reported. Most patients are men who learned the second language after childhood. Stephen Chase’s case is unique because it happened repeatedly over more than ten years, not just once.