Former Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett has been diagnosed as having signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative condition many scientists say is caused by head trauma and linked to depression and dementia.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Tony Dorsett diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a progressive degenerative brain disease found in some athletes with a history of repetitive brain trauma. CTE is indicated by a buildup of tau, an abnormal protein that strangles brain cells in areas that control memory, emotions and other functions. Autopsies of more than 50 ex-NFL players, including Hall of Famer Mike Webster and perennial All-Pro Junior Seau, who committed suicide last year, found such tau concentrations.
Dorsett said the diagnosis explains a lot about his forgetting where he is driving and his mood swings. “Memory loss, more so than anything it’s been my big deal,” he said. “Sometimes you can have sensitivity to light and things like that. But my thing was not remembering. I’ve been taking my daughters to practice for years and all of a sudden I forget how to get there.”
He also mentioned he has trouble controlling his emotions and is prone to outbursts at his wife and daughters. “It’s painful, man, for my daughters to say they’re scared of me.”
“My quality of living has changed drastically and it deteriorates every day.”
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a disease with no known cure. Researchers are developing tests to diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the living. Among them is Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neuropathologist. No one has examined more brains of deceased NFL players than McKee, who found CTE in 47 of the 48 brains she has studied. McKee is also developing a test for the living, and said it is not yet clear if currently available scans are actually showing signs of chronic traumatic encephathy or if they are indicative of other conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Dorsett said doctors have told him he is clinically depressed. “I’ve thought about crazy stuff, sort of like, ‘Why do I need to continue going through this?'” he said. “I’m too smart of a person, I like to think, to take my life, but it’s crossed my mind.”
More should have been done in the past to warn about the dangers of concussions, their lawyers argue, and more can be done now and in the future to help retired players deal with mental and physical problems they attribute to their days in the NFL.
”It’s not about whether players understood you could get a concussion playing football. It’s about the negligence of care, post-concussion, that occurred,” says Kyle Turley, an offensive lineman for the Saints.
‘Yeah, I understand you paid me to do this, but still yet, I put my life on the line for you, I put my health on the line,” Dorsett said. ”And yet when the time comes, you turn your back on me? That’s not right. That’s not the American way.
”I don’t want to get to the point where it turns into dementia, Alzheimer’s. I don’t want that,” said Dorsett, who ran for 12,739 yards, the eighth-highest total in league history. He was, in that moment, sad and deflated — in others, pumped up and angry, fists flying to punctuate his words. ”There’s no doubt in my mind that … what I went through as a football player is taking an effect on me today. There’s no ifs ands or buts about that. I’m just hoping and praying I can find a way to cut it off at the pass.”
