HJBR May/Jun 2023

CTE 16 MAY / JUN 2023 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE average male to die of brain or spinal cord cancer. One study. And those former Notre Dame players pushed to make that happen. Considering that CTE is now a major con- cern in the NFL ranks, and the NFL has been dragged in front of Con- gress several times, finally having to admit there is a correlation between playing football and degenerative brain disease, I was shocked that there was no data on college play- ers’ COD. I personally know of several NCAA players who died of an over- dose or a heart attack with behav- ior attributable to CTE. So, I started looking and asking around. I called widows of former players who have died. None were asked to donate their husbands’ brains to check for CTE. I figured universities with major football programs and medi- cal schools would be logically inter- ested in solving a degenerative brain disease happening in their former players (at minimum, NFL players were once college players). This does not appear to be the case. I won- dered why former players of Amer- ica’s favorite game were not being tracked later in life, especially if we felt they might be at risk for degen- erative brain damage. Why did we have such trouble getting help for Smith when he needed it? Why weren’t healthcare providers aware of the unique issues football players may have? I had watched the movie Concussion when Smith was sick. I am not one to fall for conspiracies, but after finding so very little research once the CTE pathology was confirmed, I watched PBS’s Frontline: League of Denial, the movie Head Games , and hours of NFL congressional tes- timony. Interestingly, the leading university studying CTE, Boston University, no longer has a football program. So, I called them; and yes, the CTE-glio- blastoma comorbidity found in Smith’s brain has piqued interest. How many play- ers might have both, and might there be a way to check for CTE in the living through the biopsies of glioblastoma in former play- ers who are still alive? If so, could that be a breakthrough in creating a clinical diagno- sis for CTE, which currently does not exist, or even an eventual cure? Dauna Beal, wife of former Texas A&M quarterback, David Beal, the player Coach Sherrill was mourn- ing, was one of the widows who was not asked to donate her husband’s brain for CTE research or made aware of the possibility. Now, a frozen biopsy held at the University of Arkansas Medical Center may soon be on its way to the Boston University CTE Center’s pathology lab run by Ann Mckee, MD. “It will be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” I am told by the center’s director Robert Stern, PhD, but if it is the right tissue containing the signature CTE, tau pathology, it may be able to yield a positive, but not a negative. CTE is patchy … but it is a possibility. Smith’s brain pathology showed he had a lot going on up there. And the question I come back to is would he be alive today if he had not played football? Because it is one thing to have the man you have loved for 32 years die in your arms of brain cancer and think it was just his time. But add CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma, also associated with inflammation, and well, shoot, I think he actually would be alive if he had chosen, say tennis, golf, or perhaps even soccer. And knowing him, he would have excelled at those games and would still be enjoying them today. Now, I admit it is quite a thing to think someone might be alive today if they did not play a game. The NCAA’s website refers to those like me, who donate the brains of our husbands to science, as “troubled widows” seeking answers because our husbands’ brains did not “age gracefully” or stay “sturdy.” I hap- pen to think my husband was per- haps one of the most graceful people I have met. He loved the game of football and was proud to have received a scholarship from the NCAA. He loved his teammates. They call themselves “brothers.” I am saddened that an NCAAneuropsych consultant would disparage former players suffering the effects of brain trauma. I guess I expected more from a behavioral health professional. The NCAA piece, “A Gray Matter,” goes on Smith’s brain. Left side: Filled with Glioblastoma hours after death. Right side: Fixed for CTE analysis.