Worst Possible Outcome for Concussions over a Period of Time

http://concussionfoundation.org

The Mchale’s are family friends of my family and have gone through one of the hardest situations a person can go through a family member's death.  In 2008 Tom Mchale passed away leaving the family fatherless and for Lisa Mchale to handle three boys on her own.  Tom was in the NFL for about 9 years and loved every second of it.  When Tom was proclaimed dead it was because of accidental drug overdose, but when doctors later researched it was because of CTE. (chronic traumatic encephalopathy)  Lisa Mchale does a interview with FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore and talks about what happened to her husband and what is happening to these NFL players who are taking all these hits in the long term. This article shows Lisa’s first hand experience with what happened to her husband and what is happening to these professional players.

Lisa Mchale is now looking into the CTE disease and has come out and talked about what happened to her husband. That because of football and all of the injuries that the players receive throughout their career to there heads that her husband is dead.  She exclaimed that “I think that's the gist of all of this for me, is that concussions were happening all the time. And I have to assume he had no idea that there was any reason that he should be concerned or that what he was actually experiencing was a concussion.”(Mchale)  The professional players in the NFL hit hard and after a long period of time there brains become damaged.  The NFL is becoming more aware of these concussions but that doesn't mean that they aren't pushing their players to come back to play sooner than they are ready to.  Overall something needs to change within the NFL and other contact sports in order for these players to be safe in the long run.

Tom Mchale brain was examined after he died to see if they could link professional football with his death.  What they found in his brain is surprising and horrifying to the NFL and family, Lisa says that “even so, he had a Stage 3 disease; Stage 4 is full-blown dementia. He was really advanced. So he was compensating probably pretty well for his level of disease.” (Mchale)  A healthy brain has a nice light blue color as Tom's brain had brown almost covering the whole brain.  This means that his brain was slowly dying and that all those concussions were seriously impacting his brain over time.  Overall by seeing what happened in Tom Mchale’s head researchers were able to show what is happening in brains of these athletes.  Concussions are happening all throughout sports all the time and if they keep recurring then we could see a deadly future for athletes with numerous concussions.

Future Research Question: Are pads used in contact sports reliable for the players to use and do they help protect against concussions?