Jason Taylor’s pain shows NFL’s world of hurt

[Playoffs]

Wow.

Jason Taylor’s pain shows NFL’s world of hurt
Dan Le Batard, Miami Herald

...
Dolphins legend Jason Taylor, for example, grew up right before our eyes, from a skinny Akron kid to a future Hall of Famer, his very public path out in front of those lights for 15 years. But take a look at what was happening in the dark. He was just a few blessed hours from having his leg amputated. He played games, plural, with a hidden and taped catheter running from his armpit to his heart. His calf was oozing blood for so many months, from September of one year to February of another, that he had to have the equivalent of a drain installed.

This is a story of the private pain endured in pursuit of public glory, just one man’s broken body on a battlefield littered with thousands of them. As death and depression and dementia addle football’s mind, persuading some of the gladiators to kill themselves as a solution to end all the pain, and as the media finally shines a light on football’s concussed skull at the very iceberg-top of the problem, we begin the anatomy of Taylor’s story at the very bottom … with his feet.

He had torn tissues in the bottom of both of them. But he wanted to play. He always wanted to play. So he went to a private room inside the football stadium.

“Like a dungeon,” he says now. “One light bulb swaying back and forth. There was a damp, musty smell. It was like the basement in Pulp Fiction.”

The doctors handed him a towel. For his mouth. To keep him from biting his tongue. And to muffle his screaming.

“It is the worst ever,” he says. “By far. All the nerve endings in your feet.”

That wasn’t the ailment. No, that was the cure. A needle has to go in that foot, and there aren’t a lot of soft, friendly places for a big needle in a foot. That foot pain is there for a reason, of course. It is your body screaming to your brain for help. A warning. The needle mutes the screaming and the warning.

“The first shot is ridiculous,” Taylor says. “Ridiculously horrible. Excruciating.”

But the first shot to the foot wasn’t even the remedy. The first shot was just to numb the area … in preparation for the second shot, which was worse...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/1...#storylink=cpy

[eriadoc]

You know why I don't have an excessive amount of sympathy for them? The last few lines of the article:

The training room? Taylor hated guys who “took up residency” there, calling them “soft.” His mentor, Dan Marino, has a quote up on one of the walls in there, something about how being in the training room doesn’t make you part of the team. Taylor was proud to learn that one of his own quotes has been put up in there, too: Be a player, not a patient. So even the one solitary place designated for healing in football, the one safe haven, is literally surrounded on all sides by walls of voices telling the player to get the hell out of here.

“Would I do it all again? I would,” Taylor says. “If I had to sleep on the steps standing up for 15 years, I would do it.”

[MEGA SWATT]

Dayum.

Thx op.

[Mr teX]

The NFL needs to mandate at the. Very least these dudes wear all their pads...sure it wouldn't help with most of the internal injuries, but they need to protect these dudes from themselves...this article is just 1 player's account but i bet this stuff is rampant all over the nfl

[Txn_in_Oki]

Sorry but I have no sympathy. You signed the dotted line and are being well compensated for it. Much better compensated than some 19 year old kid with brain injuries from an IED.

You chose the life now deal with the repercussions.

[TheCD]

One thing I never have and never will umderstand is how steroids and hgh are 'performance enhancing' and things like these are not. If the contention is that steroids and hgh causena player to perform at a level that is abnormal or better than they would have without it, then this is most definitely on the same level.

[Playoffs]

No where in the article does Taylor ask for sympathy.

And no way I'd take needles in my feet every week.

[eriadoc]

Originally Posted by Playoffs

No where in the article does Taylor ask for sympathy.

No, he's not. It's the writer that's doing that. The style of the piece is designed to evoke sympathy.

[TheRealJoker]

That's the price you pay to be remembered long after you're dead. He'll be in Canton soon.