Chris Birch used to be a rather good rugby player. He was engaged to be married to his girlfriend, had tons of jock friends, did typical masculine, straight-boy things like doing back flips to impress his friends. Until one fateful day when a harmless back flip in the gym turned into a broken neck and a massive stroke.

What happened next was mostly unheard of, until now. Chris Birch woke up from the accident completely converted to homosexuality.

“It sounds strange, but when I came round I immediately felt different,” Birch told the Daily Mail. “I wasn't interested in women any more. I was definitely gay. I had never been attracted to a man before—I'd never even had any gay friends.”

But just how did he know? Well ...

“I felt my stomach flutter and the same feelings I used to have for pretty girls came across me,” said Birch. “I had never felt like that about a man before but I knew immediately what the feeling was. I fancied him.”

Chris started losing weight and left his job at the bank to procure a job more suited to his new-found interests. Chris became a hairdresser. He stopped playing sports, quit his girlfriend, and found new friends. His personality has taken a complete turn. Is all this possible? This is from the British tabloids, after all ...

“Strokes are traumatic, life-changing experiences, which can make you reassess life and your feelings so perhaps that's the reason behind it,” Joe Korner, director of communications for The Stroke Association in the U.K., told CBS News in an email. “Whether or not the stroke turned Chris gay, or whether he was gay anyway but unaware of it, his experience seems to be a positive one, which is great.”

Salon.com has a good take on this as well, asking the experts.