Oxnard, California (CNN) -- A few years ago, during one of his lowest points, Ronney Jenkins decided to play a game of Russian roulette. He pointed the metal barrel of a gun at his head, he said, as one ominous click followed another.
Eventually -- inevitably -- the gun discharged. "It's scary. I think about it all the time," said Jenkins, 36, wringing his hands as he recalled one of his two suicide attempts. "The way it happened, it clearly wasn't my time ... it wasn't my time to go." Jenkins, a former running back and kick return specialist in the National Football League, might look at that episode as something to forget -- except that the same dark thoughts, at times, still overwhelm him. In the 11 years since he retired from the NFL, Jenkins has dealt with serious cognitive issues: a memory that is feeble at best, crushing depression and rage he can neither understand nor predict.
Jenkins believes that innumerable head impacts during his six-year professional career -- and during the decades leading up to the pros -- explain his struggles. He said that he has tried, in vain, to get help from the league and the NFL Players Association, a union representing players.
"I've reached out and I'm not getting too many calls back," said Jenkins. The game that changed everything. Jenkins said the beginning of the end for him, cognitively, began in November 2001, when he was tackled during a game between his team, the San Diego Chargers, and the Denver Broncos.
At the tail end of that tackle, Jenkins' neck bent so dramatically that the side of his head appeared, for a split second, to lie flat against his chest. At the same time, his head was being burrowed into the ground. After that hit, Jenkins was unconscious for several seconds. When he woke, his memory of who he was or what he had just been doing had vanished, he said.
It is unlikely that his brain could have healed from such a traumatic injury, yet he played the following week. "Players on the other team ... they were not even understanding why I was playing in that game (the next week)," said Jenkins. "When you have players from the rival team acting like they're concerned, it must be something."
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http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/01/health/jenki...
Posted By: Jen Fad
Saturday, February 1st 2014 at 1:19PM
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