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Authors: Mark Fainaru-Wada
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if he could call the doctor and try to talk him out of it. The trainer said no.
Hoge came back the next day.
“Did you guys change your mind?” he asked Caito.
The answer was still no. Hoge now set his sights on the season opener, two weeks away. He desperately wanted to play. The Bears, who had just signed him to a three-year, $2.4 million contract, wanted that too, of course. Unlike Pittsburgh, the Bears had neither a neurological specialist like Joe Maroon nor a diagnostic test to measure how Hoge’s brain was functioning. It was all an educated guess as to whether Hoge, chomping at the bit, was fit to play again.
And so one week after Hoge thought he heard the ocean in Kansas City, he rejoined the Bears in preparation for the regular-season openeragainst Tampa Bay. Hoge knew he wasn’t right. He still had blinding headaches and sometimes forgot the snap count. “I mean, most people now when I tell them, it’s like, ‘How stupid are you?’ ” Hoge said. “Listen, I didn’t go to school to be a neurological doctor.”
Hoge played in the season opener and three more games after that. Then, on October 2, the Bears took on the Buffalo Bills at Soldier Field. Early in the game, Hoge bent low to make a block. What happened next is a blur. When Hoge reached the sideline, his chin was sliced open and his face mask caved in. A Bears assistant had to pry it off to treat him. Hoge was unresponsive, staring into space, and so the Bears sent him to the locker room.
He was sitting on the training table when he heard someone say, “Man, are you all right?”
His eyelids fluttered, and he fell to the floor. Hoge had stopped breathing; doctors later told him that 20 seconds passed before he was revived.
He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in an ambulance. The Bears initially didn’t disclose the extent of his injury, announcing only that he had sustained his second concussion in six weeks and a lacerated chin that required stitches. Hoge held out hope for another quick return. He was released from the hospital the next day and went straight to Halas Hall, the Bears’ practice facility, wearing the same clothes he’d worn to Sunday’s game.He told a reporter for the
Chicago Tribune
that he hoped to play the next week.
In reality, Hoge was in a fog. There were many things he could no longer remember, including his two-year-old daughter’s name. A few days later, he went for a doctor’s appointment and was found wandering aimlessly in a hospital corridor. The doctor, sensing his confusion, asked him: “Who’s the President of the United States?” Hoge didn’t know that, either. By the end of the first week, the Bears were saying that Hoge was out indefinitely. The team sent him to specialists and put him through a battery of tests and scans.
When Hoge realized he wasn’t getting any better, he decided to return to Pittsburgh to see Joe Maroon and Mark Lovell.
The concussion test that Lovell and Maroon had created was designed to assess exactly this type of injury: How badly hurt was Merril Hoge’s brain? Lovell pulled outHoge’s baseline scores from the original Group of 27 and administered the exam to Hoge again.
When he saw the results, Lovell did a double take; he had never seen a football player so impaired. It had been almost two weeks since Hoge had sustained his second concussion, but his scores were half of what they’d been a year earlier.
One of the tests, the Wechsler Memory Scale, measured short-term memory in a variety of ways. One involved repeating a random sequence of numbers forward and backward. A year earlier, Hoge had tested in the sixty-first percentile on the backward test and the twentieth percentile on the forward test. This time, he tested in the eleventh percentile backward and the second percentile forward.
Lovell then administered the Controlled Oral Word Association Test, in which the subject is asked to list as many words as possible from a specific
Hoge came back the next day.
“Did you guys change your mind?” he asked Caito.
The answer was still no. Hoge now set his sights on the season opener, two weeks away. He desperately wanted to play. The Bears, who had just signed him to a three-year, $2.4 million contract, wanted that too, of course. Unlike Pittsburgh, the Bears had neither a neurological specialist like Joe Maroon nor a diagnostic test to measure how Hoge’s brain was functioning. It was all an educated guess as to whether Hoge, chomping at the bit, was fit to play again.
And so one week after Hoge thought he heard the ocean in Kansas City, he rejoined the Bears in preparation for the regular-season openeragainst Tampa Bay. Hoge knew he wasn’t right. He still had blinding headaches and sometimes forgot the snap count. “I mean, most people now when I tell them, it’s like, ‘How stupid are you?’ ” Hoge said. “Listen, I didn’t go to school to be a neurological doctor.”
Hoge played in the season opener and three more games after that. Then, on October 2, the Bears took on the Buffalo Bills at Soldier Field. Early in the game, Hoge bent low to make a block. What happened next is a blur. When Hoge reached the sideline, his chin was sliced open and his face mask caved in. A Bears assistant had to pry it off to treat him. Hoge was unresponsive, staring into space, and so the Bears sent him to the locker room.
He was sitting on the training table when he heard someone say, “Man, are you all right?”
His eyelids fluttered, and he fell to the floor. Hoge had stopped breathing; doctors later told him that 20 seconds passed before he was revived.
He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in an ambulance. The Bears initially didn’t disclose the extent of his injury, announcing only that he had sustained his second concussion in six weeks and a lacerated chin that required stitches. Hoge held out hope for another quick return. He was released from the hospital the next day and went straight to Halas Hall, the Bears’ practice facility, wearing the same clothes he’d worn to Sunday’s game.He told a reporter for the
Chicago Tribune
that he hoped to play the next week.
In reality, Hoge was in a fog. There were many things he could no longer remember, including his two-year-old daughter’s name. A few days later, he went for a doctor’s appointment and was found wandering aimlessly in a hospital corridor. The doctor, sensing his confusion, asked him: “Who’s the President of the United States?” Hoge didn’t know that, either. By the end of the first week, the Bears were saying that Hoge was out indefinitely. The team sent him to specialists and put him through a battery of tests and scans.
When Hoge realized he wasn’t getting any better, he decided to return to Pittsburgh to see Joe Maroon and Mark Lovell.
The concussion test that Lovell and Maroon had created was designed to assess exactly this type of injury: How badly hurt was Merril Hoge’s brain? Lovell pulled outHoge’s baseline scores from the original Group of 27 and administered the exam to Hoge again.
When he saw the results, Lovell did a double take; he had never seen a football player so impaired. It had been almost two weeks since Hoge had sustained his second concussion, but his scores were half of what they’d been a year earlier.
One of the tests, the Wechsler Memory Scale, measured short-term memory in a variety of ways. One involved repeating a random sequence of numbers forward and backward. A year earlier, Hoge had tested in the sixty-first percentile on the backward test and the twentieth percentile on the forward test. This time, he tested in the eleventh percentile backward and the second percentile forward.
Lovell then administered the Controlled Oral Word Association Test, in which the subject is asked to list as many words as possible from a specific
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