A 266 lb amateur rugby player was trying to impress his teammates at practice by doing a backflip. His try ended in tragedy: he fell on his neck and suffered a stroke. While he recovered without any major physical damage, his brain seems to have gone through an amazing transformation: he woke up gay.
Chris Birch says that, even though he was planning on settling down with his girlfriend, he was no longer attracted to women when he woke up. He said 'I had never been attracted to a man before - I'd never even had any gay friends. But I didn't care who I was before, I had to be true to my feelings.'
He found himself no longer interested in rugby and that he had little in common with his old friends. He now works as a hairdresser and lives with his boyfriend. His neurologist explained to him that strokes have a way of changing people's personalities. Some people wake up with different accents, or become artists. The brain makes new neural connections that can trigger things people weren't aware of.
