Family Weekly 'September 8, 1963
Wheel is used for physical thera
py to build up author's right arm.
The first Saturday morning of last
January, I awoke before the dawn.
As I moved to get out of bed, my right
side seemed heavy. Trying to lift my
right arm and leg, I found them almost
wooden. Levering myself, I managed
to stand and totter across the rug to
the bathroom. There I leaned weakly
against the door, exhausted.
Mentally, I was slightly disoriented. It was a
feeling of bewilderment rather than confusion,
of wonderment rather than panic. "What's the
matter?" I kept repeating. My immediate reac
tion was that my leg and arm had "gone to sleep."
I was surprised, though, that there was no
prickling or tingling sensation.
Awkwardly, almost tripping, I lurched back to
the bed where I sat down. Still, there was no pain,
just the clumsy unpliability of my right side. An
immense weariness settled on me. I nudged my
wife. Sleepily, she wanted to know what was the
matter. Explaining to her, I became conscious of
a difficulty in my speech. It was not so much that
I couldn't think or express myself as it was a
general awareness that I had to form my words
before speaking them. It was something like try
ing to talk through puffed-up lips after being hit
hard on the mouth.
Fully awake now, my wife called the doctor. By
the time he arrived an hour later, my right arm
and hand were completely immobile. I could just
barely wiggle the toes on my right foot. With my
weariness came a mounting anxiety, not about
anything in particular, just an overriding un
easiness of mind.
I had suffered a stroke, which is the nation's
third largest killer, behind heart disease and can
cer. Strokes claim 200,000 lives annually in the
United States alone, cripple an estimated half-a-million
other victims. There are more than 1,800,
000 individuals of all ages who have had one or
more strokes and are now in hospitals, nursing
homes, or other institutions, as well as those being
cared for at home.
I was lucky that my stroke came when it did.
Only a dozen years ago, little could have been of
fered me except chronic invalidism and kind
words. Today, much can be done. I've just about
licked my own stroke, and only a few months
after my attack. I work a full day, speak effort
lessly, walk nearly normally, and already have
regained two-thirds use of my leg and arm.
Until my stroke, I, like most people, thought
these accidents happened mainly to the elderly.
I'm only 45, but stroke in my age group, I found,
is common. In fact, in the 35 to 44 group it ranks
fourth as a cause of death, after cancer, heart
' attacks, and accidents. High-tension jobs, so of-
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