The Invisible Sports Injury Parents Should Never Ignore
Karen Zegel of Pennsylvania just wanted to provide opportunities for her son. When she signed him up to play football at age ten, it was to make friends and learn to succeed in a popular team sport. Young Patrick became a leader on the gridiron and excelled in his studies. When he was accepted to Dartmouth College, it seemed like Patrick was blessed to have a wonderful life. But something happened to make all the hard work on and off the field unimportant.
His mom can look back through Patrick’s life and she can chronicle just about every “hit” he experienced. She saw all of the tackles and collisions he had beginning at age ten in youth football and ending when he stopped playing in his junior year at Dartmouth College. There were thousands of hits, small, medium, and large. Yet Patrick was never diagnosed with a concussion. He loved the game and took the hits bravely. But all those hits started a disease in his brain called CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE eventually caused Patrick to take his own life. Take those repetitive hits out of his life and Patrick would still be here today, excelling at something, raising his son, and being the amazing person she remembers before his brain was destroyed.
When Patrick graduated and came home, his mom was so proud. In her mind, there was nothing Patrick couldn’t do or achieve. The trouble is, she got a different Patrick home than the one she had sent to college.
He was angry a lot, reclusive, depressed, anxious, oblivious, kind of dysfunctional, and surprisingly lacking in self-esteem.
Patrick had a lot of bright spots, a beautiful son, lots of golf, friends that loved him, and a family that adored him.
But his brain was failing him quickly.
Over the next ten years. Patrick’s mom watched a beautiful mind deteriorate and become unwired. She started to see a scared and distant look in his eyes. It broke her heart to see how much he suffered.
He was forgetting everything; he even forgot how to tie his shoelaces and sign his name.
When Patrick would occasionally venture out of the house to help a friend or go to the doctor, people saw the fun, charming, good-looking young man they all knew. But he could only hold it together for short periods of time.
Patrick ended up having almost every mental symptom you can think of. He would have weird verbal outbursts at inappropriate times. He would stumble and fall and slur his words. He would have headaches and other pain that traveled all over his body.
The scariest symptom was lack of sleep. Patrick went many days without sleep. Combining that with irrational thoughts and depression was a recipe for disaster. Somehow the door for suicidal thinking swung open, and Patrick walked through that door.
Through Patrick’s passing, his mom learned about the brain disease so insidious that it makes people do something they would never normally do. Patrick left behind a three-year-old son that he truly adored.
Patrick wasn’t an NFL football player. He had only played college football.
Her unbearable loss and disbelief caused her to start a website, StopCTE.org, to help people recognize the disease. No one saw Patrick’s disease until the very end. Sadly, Patrick suffered with the disease for a long time, and she didn’t know. She saw all the symptoms, but no one could tell her what it was.
Doctors, rehab centers, psychologists, and counselors all misdiagnosed Patrick with Audio Processing Disorder, Adult Onset ADHD, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Depression, and PTSD.
She wants families of veterans or contact sports athletes or domestic abuse victims to know that if a person seems to be changing and going off the rails, they may be dealing with a physical disease of the brain rather than a psychological problem.
Science is telling us that CTE is 100% preventable. But sadly, we know it is caused by activities kids are still engaging in all over this country every day.
Suicide is a major national public health issue in the United States.
The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
America has taken the lead in overdose deaths.
And the US is on the top of the heap when looking at mental disorders.
Could it be because we subject 4 million children a year to contact sports? If you look at the symptoms of CTE and brain trauma, it makes you wonder. Maybe we can’t see the connection because we are not looking for it. How many medical examiners look for a history of contact sports, domestic abuse, or military history when they are faced with an overdose or suicide? How many news organizations look for that history when they report on shootings and irrational acts?
Resources
Patrick’s mom knows the game Patrick loved gave him so much, but it also gave him a disease that slowly robbed him of all he worked for. Thousands of hits for a young developing brain was too much. She can’t take those hits back; the damage was done. She wants us to learn from her biggest mistake.
Sadly, CTE symptoms can also lead to arrests. Please see this arrest database for the NFL. Barely a month goes by without people in trouble with the law. Do we want this to happen to our young athletes—our brave, intelligent, hopeful children? The human mind is too fragile to take the beatings we are subjecting them to. The uncontrollable anger, lack of reality, irrational behaviors, and addictions are all symptoms of CTE.