Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Play Football, Part II

And...here's the rest of the story...

In 2006, the NFL appointed a new Commissioner, Roger Goodell, who, over the course of 24 years, had come up through the NFL ranks.  The chairman of the MTBI was replaced by Dr. Ira Casson, who would go on to be called Dr. No, so named because of his repeated "no" answers to ongoing questions regarding the correlation between concussions and brain trauma.

In 2007, an NFL summit was convened to discuss medical findings relating to concussions.  Dr. Omalu, the scientist who first identified CTE, was not invited.  Dr Julian Bailes, a former Steeler's team doctor and new believer in Omalu's research, offered to present Omalu's findings.

By this time there were two more cases of CTE to present: Andre Waters and Justin Strzelczyk. After Bailes' presentation, Casson stated that "anecdotes do not make scientifically valid evidence."

Discouraged, Omalu left Pittsburgh and moved to California.  About the same time, Dr. Ann McKee, a leading Alzheimer's researcher,was asked to join a team to further Omalu's study at Boston University.  And, a new player in the game (of research), Chris Norinski, took on the role of the Brain Chaser.  Having played college football and later as a professional wrestler, Norinski came to believe that repeated blows to his head had given him CTE.  His first clue?  A headache that lasted five years.

With Norinski's help, Boston U began receiving more and more brains of former football players to study.  All showed CTE.

In 2009, journalist Alan Schwarz received - from an NFL source - information about a study the NFL conducted with its players.  It showed that dementia and memory disorders occurred  at a higher rate than the regular community.  When Schwarz published an article about the findings, the NFL denied its own study, saying the design was flawed.

Eventually, Congress got involved, convening a series of hearings to assess the situation.  Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, could not (would not) adequately answer questions put to him; one Senator likened the NFL to Big Tobacco. 

Finally, decades after the discovery of CTE, and realizing the potentially catastrophic results of being of being lumped into the pile as the tobacco industry, the NFL took some action.  They revised their policy on head injuries:  a concussion is now a game ending injury.

Not a career ending injury.  You just couldn't go back in the game once your bell had been rung.

They also gave a million dollars to Boston University and designated BU as the preferred brain bank for CTE study.

By now, 20 brains of former NFL players had been analyzed.  Nineteen were positive for CTE.

It only gets worse.

Owen Thomas, a 21-year old college student and football player, committed suicide.  He had never been diagnosed with a concussion.  Dr. McKee began to realize that sub-concussive hits can also lead to CTE.  Even if a player is never diagnosed with a concussion, CTE can develop.

Eighteen year-old Eric Pelly, died ten days after being diagnosed with his fourth concussion. McKee was expecting to find Pelly's brain in a pristine condition, due to his youth.  Instead, she found the beginning signs of CTE.

Because brains in younger people are lighter, when the head is hit, there's more inertia so the brain hits the skull with greater force.  Researchers now say that no one under the age of fourteen should be playing tackle football.

Dr. McKee and her colleagues continued their study.  Of the 46 brains they examined, 45 were CTE positive.  McKee wonders if EVERY SINGLE NFL PLAYER HAS CTE.

In 2012, Junior Seau committed suicide in California.  Omalu asked Seau's son for permission to examine his father's brain.  As Omalu was harvesting the brain, the NFL stepped in to stop him from proceeding.  The NFL had contacted Seau's son and accused Dr. Omalu of 'practicing bad medicine. Seau's son had changed his mind.

The brain went,instead, to the National Institute of Health, not the preferred brain bank at Boston University.  Perhaps the NFL was growing weary of learning that (nearly) every former football player BU examined had CTE.   Perhaps they were hoping for a different result.

 Seau's brain was full of the tau protein that indicates the presence of CTE. A result of his 1,849 career tackles.

As late as 2013, Commissioner Goodell was still deflecting questions that link football head injuries  to CTE.  "It is unclear."

That same year, 4.500 retired football players filed a lawsuit, stating that the NFL had fraudulently concealed the risks associated with playing football.  In the lawsuit the players asked for two billion dollars.  The NFL and the players settled out of court for $765 million; the NFL admitted no liability or weakness.

Which allows them to keep denying and hiding the truth.

The NFL has made its name by marketing the violence of the sport.  There is more violence per square foot on a football field than any other sport.  The biggest cheers are, of course, for touchdowns.  The second biggest cheers are for the most brutal hits.  It has a certain Roman empire/gladiator/kill for sport ring to it.

"Everyone now has a better sense of what damage you can get from playing football.  And I think the NFL has given everybody 765 million reasons why you don't want to play football."
            - Harry Carson, New York Giants linebacker, 1976-1988

Barbaric.  Dangerous.  Deathly.

Is it worth it?

P.S.  Will Smith's new movie "Concussion" is about Dr. Bennet's fight to expose CTE.

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Play Football

As I write, the city is abuzz with all things red and gold.  Everyone's hoping for another Big Game win and a chance to converge on downtown to support their Chiefs.

Me?  Not so much.  Every time I see a promo for a football game I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach?  Why?  I'm glad you asked.

Last week I watched a PBS Frontline documentary, "League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis."  It was full of helmet crunching footage, sad, sad stories of retired football players, decades of denials from the NFL and a grim prognosis for all football players and the sport itself.

In 2002, Pittsburgh Steeler player Mike Webster died, eleven years after he left professional football. He was fifty years old.  Dr. Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who performed the autopsy, said that if he hadn't know how old Mike was, he would have guessed he was in his seventies.

Pictures of his legs during the autopsy were horrifying.  For lack of a better description, they looked like Cabbage Patch doll legs...puffy, bloated and certainly not normal.  Mike's forehead was permanently affixed to his skull, the result of scar tissue built up due to the numerous concussions he sustained during his 17 years in the pros.  Towards the end of his life, Mike was unable to focus, had trouble finding the right words, experienced fits of rage and exhibited other signs of dementia.  Eventually, he ended up living in his car.

In 1997, believing his deteriorating condition was a result of his years in the NFL, Webster filed a lawsuit against the League's retirement players board.  His lawyer sent Webster's medical records to four different doctors for review.  They all concluded that Webster had sustained traumatic brain damage as a result of his 17 years in the NFL.  The NFL had his medical records evaluated by another doctor, Dr. Ed Westbrook, who concurred with the other findings.

The NFL had no choice but to acknowledge that Webster's condition was a result of the beatings he took during his professional career and agreed to pay him a monthly disability stipend.

The NFL did not make the information public.  For decades.

In the mid-90's, the NFL established the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee (MTBI), headed by a rheumatologist(!).  Half of the doctors on the board are NFL team doctors.  Over the next fifteen years, the Committee would conduct "research" that would state that there was no relation between hitting your head and later health problems.

After Webster's death in 2002, a close examination of his brain led to a dark discovery.  Dr. Omalu, after sectioning and staining tissue from Mike's brain, discovered the presence of tau protein in areas of the brain not generally associated with dementia or Alzheimer's.  The presence of tau protein destroys the integrity of surrounding brain cells.

Omalu classified the condition as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).  He published his findings in the journal Neurosurgery. The MTBI attacked Omalu's article, claiming that there was no evidence that Webster's brain was abnormal.

In 2005, another Steeler's player, Terry Long, died after drinking anti-freeze.  Omalu examined Long's brain and found the same tau proteins.  The MTBI again refused to acknowledge Omalu's findings, accusing him of "practicing voodoo."

Omalu was summoned to speak with an NFL doctor.  During the course of their discussion, Omalu was asked several times, "Do you know the implications of what you're doing?" several times.  Finally, Omalu says, "Why don't you just tell me."

"If ten percent of mothers in this country would begin to perceive that football was a dangerous sport, that is the end of football."

As a mother, I am incensed to think that an organization as large as the NFL would dare to put their billions of dollars in assets and profits before the health and well-being of a child.  Their lack of response and blatant denial of concussion repercussions is heinous.

Part ll to follow...

Beware the Nit Pickers

This is the email I just sent to Apria Healthcare... 

I just spent an hour and a half on the phone with five different representatives trying to get to the bottom of a billing issue, which even now I'm not sure has been properly resolved. 

It started with a phone call from a collection agency for a bill of $14.94.  "Wait a minute," I thought. "I paid that."

So I called the fine folks at the Apria "help" center. 

This was the fourth or fifth attempt my husband and I have tried to get this straightened out over the last five months.  I can't begin to calculate the number of hours we have spent trying to resolve an issue that's less than $15.  We have been Apria clients for well over ten years.  While the products we've purchased and used have been great, the customer service is, without doubt, the worst we have ever encountered.

At the end of the last conversation I had with an Apria representative (probably in November), I asked them to send me a bill for $14.94 and I would gladly pay it.  Which they did and I did.  I thought the matter was over.  After all, I hadn't received another bill from them.  How was I to know it would end up in the Nit Pick Department? (More on that later).  

Today I spoke to five representatives.  Each one told me a different story.

The first person told me I had an account overage of $14.94. 

The second one (Janet) said my money was tied up in the Nit Pick Department.  The what department?  THE most unprofessional term I've heard in a long time.  She couldn't tell me why it was in the Nit Pick Department, but said she couldn't do a thing until it was finished in the Nit Pick Department.  When I told her I was looking at the cancelled check (on my computer screen) I'd sent last month she wanted me to send me a copy of it to her.  Clearly, Apria had received it because, again, I was looking at the cancelled check. In my opinion, it's not my fault that the check was lost (or tied up in limbo in the Nit Pick Department - again, really?); therefore, I should not have to prove that the invoice was paid.  Also, if my money is in the Nit Pick Department being haggled over, or whatever it is they do in the Nit Pick Department, why was it turned over to collection?  It's there, in the Nit Pick Department.  Quit nit picking and use the money to settle my account.

The third person (a supervisor named Taylor) bore the brunt of my frustration.  She tried to back peddle the whole Nit Pick Department thing.  In my mind I was thinking, "I could bring down the whole company by letting the world know there's such a thing as a Nit Pick Department at Apria."  But then I decided I'd wasted enough time on you guys. (OK, I lied.)

Taylor finally - after at least a half hour of not being able to answer my concerns in a satisfying manner - offered to write off the balance.  She also told me that our insurance company hadn't paid our last claim at 100%, which I told her was strange, given the fact that they had been doing since April, when we met our out-of-pocket deductible.  

I told her I'd check on our insurance website.  Sure enough, the information on the website indicates that they paid the claim in full.

So...I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.  I called Apria back and - silly me - asked to speak to Taylor.  Oh, that's not possible, I was told.  I'm guessing Taylor wasn't even in the same building/state/country.  I told the representative that our insurance is on record for paying the claim in full.  She said they only received a portion of it.  Dear God in heaven!  Did it end up in the Nit Pick Department again?

As I was navigating through the insurance website I noticed that for three months in a row (probably longer) our insurance had been billed for fairly large amounts.  I asked the representative what those charges were for and she couldn't tell me.  That was the fourth person.

The last person I talked to was able to answer my questions and said she saw the check for $14.94 and that she'd credit my account and everything would be at zero.  I didn't have the strength to tell her that Taylor had already credited our account.  We'll just leave that up to the Nit Pickers.

The one good thing that came out of this is that I learned that we officially own my husband's CPAP machine, so we will NEVER EVER have to use the services of Apria Health Care again.

And, if it ends up that we actually have a credit...give it to the Nit Pick Department.