How a Football-Loving SLP Views Potential Effects of Repeated Head Injuries

When I was in high school applying for colleges, I had two criteria for my potential university: strong academics and football. I knew I wanted the camaraderie of a football game day. My older sister, Beth, attended Marshall University during the Randy Moss/Chad Pennington years, and I was fortunate to attend many Thundering Herd home games during her time there. I chose the University of Tennessee for my undergraduate degree. Saturday game day in the Southeastern Conference with the Vol Navy was even more than I had expected. The power-T and tailgating were even enough to get my parents to make the drive from Williamson, West Virginia, to Knoxville, Tennessee, for home games. For my graduate degree, I decided on Florida State University. There is nothing like seeing Chief Osceola and Renegade throwing the spear into the turf! After graduate school, I moved on to Carolina Panther football. I was living in Charlotte, and it was the natural progression in my football journey. I came on board during the Jake Delhomme years and was ecstatic when they landed Cam Newton. Needless to say, I’ve spent many Saturday and Sunday afternoons enjoying one of America’s favorite sports. My outlook on football changed, however, after becoming a speech-language pathologist. I began looking at the brain in a whole new way. After studying brain injuries and seeing their effects during treatment, I found recent articles and studies on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) jarring. Could the ...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Cognitive Rehabilitation Language Disorders Traumatic Brain Injury Source Type: blogs