Ex-NFLer David Duerson donates his brain to trauma research

[kysirsoze]

I know there's a thread on his death, but I thought this part deserved its own thread. This stuff always makes me wonder if our entertainment is really worth the toll. I hope they figure something out sooner rather than later.

Tregg Duerson, his face drawn and his eyes exhausted, expressed confusion and dismay about many of the details surrounding his father's suicide last week. But he is sure about one thing.

"I wish I knew more answers. All I can do is trust what he's told me ... what he asked me to do with his brain," Duerson said.

Last week, David Duerson, a 50-year-old former player for the NFL's Chicago Bears, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. The details remain hazy, but family members believe that Duerson avoided injuring his brain so that it could be tested for disease.

In the coming months, a group of scientists at the Boston University School of Medicine will scour his brain tissue for evidence of an insidious disease among footballers called chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

"That has to take a lot of strength and a lot of courage to do that," said Otis Wilson, Duerson's best friend and former Bears teammate. "To donate your brain and the way that things went down. He's always been a strong person on and off the field, and even at the end, he's trying to help someone."

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Although Duerson did not say explicitly that he suspected chronic traumatic encephalopathy, his ex-wife said he knew that "something was not right." Recently, his vision had been failing him; so had his ability to form coherent sentences and spell.

And there was piercing pain on the left side of his brain.

"He felt the left side of his brain was the cause of many of his problems that he was experiencing," said Duerson's ex-wife, Alicia Duerson.

The disease is associated with depression, cognitive problems and suicidal thoughts -- all of which Duerson seemed to suffer before his death.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/02/26...ex.html?hpt=C2