Football seems to subject its players to enough physical and neurological risk that I expect I'll discourage my future patients from joining a competitive football team. Friends of mine who played Division
I college football loved it and have gone on to play professionally. They continue to live and breathe
football. But I noticed a toll--frequent concussions,
dramatic injuries and surgeries, shocking addiction to painkillers, and a
difficulty in balancing the competing demands of being a student and of
being a quasi-professional athlete.
Scientists are finding that the constant hits (even "microtraumas" that don't rise to the level of concussions) that football players endure can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is a progressive, untreatable, dramatic, and ultimately fatal decay of the brain that can only be diagnosed post-mortem. Researchers are increasingly conducting autopsies on NFL players and college football players, and they are finding shockingly widespread evidence of CTE. Even deceased players in their 20s and 30s are turning up with CTE, which is otherwise seen only in the elderly. The science in this field is preliminary, yet it is increasingly clear that professional, college, and high school football is a tremendously risky endeavor.
I really do enjoy gridiron football, and on the brisk evening of a big college game I was one of the shirtless guys in the stands wearing body paint. Yet recently I've stopped attending games and I even feel conflicted about cheering my home team while I watch on TV. Wouldn't it make me a hypocrite to say one thing to my patients and do another? Am I taking all of this too seriously?
More generally, does a model physician also need to be a model patient? To what extent is being a physician a job, and to what extent is it a way of life?
That last question might be rhetorical. It feels like medical school has subsumed so much of my life that it's hard for me to know where one ends and the other begins.
