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Brain Damage? Players Unwisely Ignore Dangers

Jan 28, 2009 – 10:50 PM
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Jay Mariotti

Jay Mariotti %BloggerTitle%

TAMPA, Fla. -- When his world went numb last month, when his head slammed wickedly against the ground as he was flattened by two Cleveland defenders, Ben Roethlisberger recalls being scared, sure. He couldn't feel anything in his arms. A team doctor stuck him with a pin, and he couldn't feel that, either. He lay there for 15 minutes and was hauled away on a stretcher, the victim of his third concussion in three years.

He would have headaches. Next time he tried putting on his helmet, he had trouble squeezing into it because his skull had swelled. They made him take a computer exam days later to determine if he was lucid. "They show you a bunch of words and you have to remember what they were," he said. "You have to remember shapes and colors and things like that."
Filed under: NFL, Super Bowl, Sports

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