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Dad couldn't feel his arm
It was 1955, and the boy was Martin Seligman. His father had dropped him and a friend off for a second day of golf. That night he slept at another friend's house with a dreadful feeling that something was wrong. Walking home around 9:00 the next morning, he saw his father dragged out on a stretcher into an ambulance after a small stroke.
Within a couple of days his mother told him the strokes had been massive. Over the next months he visited his father reluctantly, afraid of the helplessness he saw. His father was paralyzed, and he could speak: he said he was helpless, did not want to die, and loved his wife, his son, and his daughter.
The boy's response was avoidance. He stayed away from his father and from seeing more of it. In college he found himself wearing black all the time and thinking all the time about death.
Why would a stroke affect one arm?
The brain's two hemispheres control opposite sides of the body, so a stroke in the right hemisphere typically affects the left arm and leg. A stroke happens when blood flow to part of the brain is cut off by a blocked artery or a bleed. Brain cells in the starved area begin to die within minutes. The affected region determines whether movement, sensation, or speech is lost.
What could doctors do for strokes in 1955?
Doctors in the 1950s had no brain scans to tell a clot from a bleed, since CT scanning reached hospitals in the 1970s. Treatment mostly consisted of rest and supportive care. The first clot-dissolving drug approved for stroke, alteplase, received US approval in 1996 after a trial sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.