Pedro’s other son Paul Bach-y-Rita was a doctor. But in 1965, there were no brain scans and no ability to see what was actually going on inside the brain. A fellow doctor named Dr. Mary Jane Aguilar performed an autopsy. A few days later, Dr. Aguilar called Paul very excitedly and said, “Paul, come down here. I’ve got something to show you.” When Paul got there, he saw slices of his father’s brain spread out on glass slides. It turned Paul’s stomach to see his father’s brain displayed like that. But he swallowed hard and began to study the slides.
The brain slices revealed that his father had several huge lesions from the stroke that had never healed. There was severe damage in the brain stem which is the part of the brain that connects the spinal cord to the rest of the brain. Ninety-seven percent of the nerves that run from the cerebral cortex to the spine had been destroyed. This was what caused the paralysis. Paul stared in disbelief. How was his father able to completely recover the use of his entire body, including his ability to speak with that much damage to his brain?