As my regular readers know, I’ve blogged quite a bit about how football players develop Parkinson’s disease and other neurological issues as a result of the frequent concussions and related head injuries they endure while playing the sport. (My recent rant about Donald Trump has links to my previous posts.)
Today’s New York Times reports yet another football tragedy. Former NFL star Tyler Sash died recently of a drug overdose, and an examination of his brain during the autopsy revealed he had an advanced case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma. CTE has been noted in the brains of dozens of deceased NFL players. (The current movie “Concussion” is all about how CTE was first discovered in NFL players, and how the NFL continued to suppress any news about it.)
The whole NY Times article is filled with heart-wrenching details. Here are a few quotes:
Cut by the Giants in 2013 after what was at least his fifth concussion, Sash had returned to Iowa and increasingly displayed surprising and irregular behavior, family members said this week. He was arrested in his hometown, Oskaloosa, for public intoxication after leading the police on a four-block chase with a motorized scooter, a pursuit that ended with Sash fleeing toward a wooded area.
Sash had bouts of confusion, memory loss and minor fits of temper. Although an Iowa sports celebrity, both as a Super Bowl-winning member of the Giants and a popular star athlete at the University of Iowa, Sash was unable to seek meaningful employment because he had difficulty focusing long enough to finish a job.
And:
Last week, representatives from Boston University and the Concussion Legacy Foundation notified the Sash family that C.T.E. had been diagnosed in Tyler’s brain and that the disease, which can be confirmed only posthumously, had advanced to a stage rarely seen in someone his age.
Dr. Ann McKee, chief of neuropathology at the V.A. Boston Healthcare System and a professor of neurology and pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine who conducted the examination, said Tuesday that the severity of the C.T.E. in Sash’s brain was about the same as the level found in the brain of the former N.F.L. star Junior Seau, who committed suicide in 2012 at age 43.
And:
Josh Sash, eight years older than Tyler, said his brother sustained at least two concussions in high school, one documented concussion in college and two with the Giants, including one in the Giants’ playoff victory over the San Francisco 49ers that earned the team its berth in the Super Bowl after the 2011 season.
In the San Francisco game, Sash, who was 215 pounds, was blindsided by a brutal and borderline late hit on a punt return by a 281-pound defensive lineman.
“Those concussions are the ones we definitely know about,” Josh Sash said. “If you’ve played football, you know there are often other incidents.”
Experts believe that less severe blows to the head — those not strong enough to cause a concussion — also significantly contribute to the damage that results in C.T.E. These lesser traumas are especially troubling, neurologists say, because they happen frequently in contact sports like football but go undiagnosed.
All in all, very sad.
Both images downloaded from Wikipedia.
