T.J. Abraham is a block of a man with a tree-trunk neck and a lantern jaw. He played football at a top Catholic high school outside Pittsburgh and then traveled downtown to Duquesne University, where he played another three years.
He was an offensive lineman back then, and he gloried in the fraternity of hit and get hit, joyfully clanking helmets. Sometimes he saw stars, sometimes he puked and so what? Get back up and get back in. “I probably got my bell rung 70 times,” he said Sunday with a crooked smile.
He always knew he would get on with life. He was a top student, and in time he became an obstetrics & gynecology doctor, delivering so many babies, maybe 3,000, a gregarious guy who remembered birthdays and who could make a nervous expectant mother grin. He had a beautiful home and a wife and a young daughter and a teenage son. He was a son of western Pennsylvania and life was grand.
He shakes his head: Until it wasn’t.
It was about seven years ago that the now 42-year-old Abraham said he began to notice his temper flaring without reason. His memory and judgment became flickering lamps. In a panic, he began a medical trek that ended with an inconceivable diagnosis: neurodegenerative dementia.
“When you hear the words ‘no cure’ and ‘you’re only going to get worse,’ well, that is tough,” Abraham said. “There is no light at the end of the tunnel. This was not supposed to be my life.”
As to the cause?
The brain is a terrifically complex instrument, and its misfires are not like diagnosing a busted carburetor. But doctors in Boston, Philadelphia and California agreed that all signs pointed to football as the root of Abraham’s cognitive issues, and they raised the strong possibility that one day his survivors will learn that he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head, the one found — almost always posthumously — in the brains of so many football players.
111 N.F.L. Brains. All But One Had C.T.E.
A neuropathologist has examined the brains of 111 N.F.L. players — and 110 were found to have C.T.E., the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head.
July 25, 2017
Abraham is intent on coming to terms with his new reality. On Tuesday, he will testify at a New York State Assembly hearing on a proposed bill to ban tackle football for children age 12 and younger. He loved football, played and coached it, and the sport gave him so much joy. And he sees his testimony as driven by moral necessity.
“I do not want to see anyone lose what I’ve lost or experience this disease,” he has written in his testimony, which he labored on for days, fearful words might fail him. “I strongly urge you to ban tackle football at the age of 12 and younger in the state of New York.”
Continue reading the main story
Abraham spoke of his life journey on Sunday. I met him at his handsome home amid stands of oaks and the vineyards of Harborcreek, Pa., and we drove to Erie and sat in his S.U.V. outside UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, which sits on a bluff overlooking the gray-white chop of Lake Erie. This was Abraham’s professional home. He worked 100-hour weeks here, loving the challenge, the camaraderie, the purity of each birth. When he resigned in 2018, his partners, women and men, put their heads on his big shoulders and sobbed.
He felt himself in a bad dream, and that he had no choice.
He had for several years tried to ignore the gathering clouds in his brain. He learned to fill his daily phone calendar to overflowing, dozens upon dozens of reminders. He forgot the names of patients and nurses. He misplaced his pager and lost his hospital badge. He attributed this to the wages of too many hours and stresses. He downloaded apps so that he’d know which antibiotics to prescribe, which birth control pills to recommend. Some days, by evening, he grew scared and he would think to himself: Tomorrow I’ve got to see someone about this.
He would forget that by the time he awoke.
“I had been lying to the nurses and tell them I had to pee so that I could go and look up how to finish a surgery,” he said. “Finally I said enough. No more.”
To talk of his present is to wind back to his past, and to football. His memory is of hit upon hit upon hit, that was life on an offensive line. His experience is consistent with the direction of much of the new research. Football’s threat to the brain now is less about concussions, those most catastrophic of head collisions, than repeated hits, the sheer repetitive smacking around of the brain inside the skull. Boston University’s C.T.E. center has estimated that the average college football player experiences 800-1,000 hits in a single season.
The rituals of practice pour fuel on the fires of aggression. Abraham recalled bull in the ring, that most primal of football drills. The players would form a circle and a player would step into the middle, shuffling feet, eyes darting, as player after player hurtled at the “bull,” smacking pads, cracking helmets. Sometimes Abraham would fall to the ground, his head spinning.
The training grew tougher in college. Abraham was no small fellow, 6-foot-1 and 260 pounds, and for his size quick as a panther. But at Duquesne, for the first time, he found himself facing bigger, stouter, faster players, and coaches who demanded freshmen prove themselves by facing off against the junior and senior starters. “They wanted to see who was not afraid to hit and get hit,” he said. “Man, there were guys with biceps the size of my head.”
As they clanked and whacked, he said, the coaches yelled: “Don’t be a sissy, hit him!”
This is not to suggest Duquesne was particularly brutal. These are simply the wages of major college football.
Some days now, Abraham feels as if he is surrounded by shards of his life. He remembers but not really. He comprehends but not completely. “I remember nothing about the birth of my daughter,” he said. “I remember nothing about my wedding. To know that I said things to hurt people, it’s like when you get drunk and you wake up and 'what the hell?’”
For all the medical evidence pointing in the direction of C.T.E., though, he cannot state with certainty that he has it. There’s that crooked smile of his again. “They can only determine that after my death.”
For now, he is intent on spending as much time as possible with his children.
“My daughter asks me: ‘Daddy, is your brain getting better?’” Abraham said. “And my heart breaks because I know the answer is no.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/...&module=trending&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer
He was an offensive lineman back then, and he gloried in the fraternity of hit and get hit, joyfully clanking helmets. Sometimes he saw stars, sometimes he puked and so what? Get back up and get back in. “I probably got my bell rung 70 times,” he said Sunday with a crooked smile.
He always knew he would get on with life. He was a top student, and in time he became an obstetrics & gynecology doctor, delivering so many babies, maybe 3,000, a gregarious guy who remembered birthdays and who could make a nervous expectant mother grin. He had a beautiful home and a wife and a young daughter and a teenage son. He was a son of western Pennsylvania and life was grand.
He shakes his head: Until it wasn’t.
It was about seven years ago that the now 42-year-old Abraham said he began to notice his temper flaring without reason. His memory and judgment became flickering lamps. In a panic, he began a medical trek that ended with an inconceivable diagnosis: neurodegenerative dementia.
“When you hear the words ‘no cure’ and ‘you’re only going to get worse,’ well, that is tough,” Abraham said. “There is no light at the end of the tunnel. This was not supposed to be my life.”
As to the cause?
The brain is a terrifically complex instrument, and its misfires are not like diagnosing a busted carburetor. But doctors in Boston, Philadelphia and California agreed that all signs pointed to football as the root of Abraham’s cognitive issues, and they raised the strong possibility that one day his survivors will learn that he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head, the one found — almost always posthumously — in the brains of so many football players.
111 N.F.L. Brains. All But One Had C.T.E.
A neuropathologist has examined the brains of 111 N.F.L. players — and 110 were found to have C.T.E., the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head.
July 25, 2017
Abraham is intent on coming to terms with his new reality. On Tuesday, he will testify at a New York State Assembly hearing on a proposed bill to ban tackle football for children age 12 and younger. He loved football, played and coached it, and the sport gave him so much joy. And he sees his testimony as driven by moral necessity.
“I do not want to see anyone lose what I’ve lost or experience this disease,” he has written in his testimony, which he labored on for days, fearful words might fail him. “I strongly urge you to ban tackle football at the age of 12 and younger in the state of New York.”
Continue reading the main story
Abraham spoke of his life journey on Sunday. I met him at his handsome home amid stands of oaks and the vineyards of Harborcreek, Pa., and we drove to Erie and sat in his S.U.V. outside UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, which sits on a bluff overlooking the gray-white chop of Lake Erie. This was Abraham’s professional home. He worked 100-hour weeks here, loving the challenge, the camaraderie, the purity of each birth. When he resigned in 2018, his partners, women and men, put their heads on his big shoulders and sobbed.
He felt himself in a bad dream, and that he had no choice.
He had for several years tried to ignore the gathering clouds in his brain. He learned to fill his daily phone calendar to overflowing, dozens upon dozens of reminders. He forgot the names of patients and nurses. He misplaced his pager and lost his hospital badge. He attributed this to the wages of too many hours and stresses. He downloaded apps so that he’d know which antibiotics to prescribe, which birth control pills to recommend. Some days, by evening, he grew scared and he would think to himself: Tomorrow I’ve got to see someone about this.
He would forget that by the time he awoke.
“I had been lying to the nurses and tell them I had to pee so that I could go and look up how to finish a surgery,” he said. “Finally I said enough. No more.”
To talk of his present is to wind back to his past, and to football. His memory is of hit upon hit upon hit, that was life on an offensive line. His experience is consistent with the direction of much of the new research. Football’s threat to the brain now is less about concussions, those most catastrophic of head collisions, than repeated hits, the sheer repetitive smacking around of the brain inside the skull. Boston University’s C.T.E. center has estimated that the average college football player experiences 800-1,000 hits in a single season.
The rituals of practice pour fuel on the fires of aggression. Abraham recalled bull in the ring, that most primal of football drills. The players would form a circle and a player would step into the middle, shuffling feet, eyes darting, as player after player hurtled at the “bull,” smacking pads, cracking helmets. Sometimes Abraham would fall to the ground, his head spinning.
The training grew tougher in college. Abraham was no small fellow, 6-foot-1 and 260 pounds, and for his size quick as a panther. But at Duquesne, for the first time, he found himself facing bigger, stouter, faster players, and coaches who demanded freshmen prove themselves by facing off against the junior and senior starters. “They wanted to see who was not afraid to hit and get hit,” he said. “Man, there were guys with biceps the size of my head.”
As they clanked and whacked, he said, the coaches yelled: “Don’t be a sissy, hit him!”
This is not to suggest Duquesne was particularly brutal. These are simply the wages of major college football.
Some days now, Abraham feels as if he is surrounded by shards of his life. He remembers but not really. He comprehends but not completely. “I remember nothing about the birth of my daughter,” he said. “I remember nothing about my wedding. To know that I said things to hurt people, it’s like when you get drunk and you wake up and 'what the hell?’”
For all the medical evidence pointing in the direction of C.T.E., though, he cannot state with certainty that he has it. There’s that crooked smile of his again. “They can only determine that after my death.”
For now, he is intent on spending as much time as possible with his children.
“My daughter asks me: ‘Daddy, is your brain getting better?’” Abraham said. “And my heart breaks because I know the answer is no.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/...&module=trending&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer
