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Packers Brett Favre paid a high price for his tough football star

Posted on by Vanessa
Packers Brett Favre paid a high price for his tough football star

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GREEN BAY – The price of being a football hero can be staggering.

That was my first thought when Brett Favre announced on Tuesday that he has Parkinson's disease.

One of the reasons that made him an exceptional player and a perennial favorite among his teammates and Packers fans is now the reason Favre faces the frightening prospect of having to live with a progressive neurological disorder.

His legendary toughness is summed up by his NFL record of 297 consecutive starts, a streak he considered his greatest accomplishment as a player. He no doubt knew he would pay a physical price for it later, but since he played before the NFL took head injuries seriously, it likely wasn't until retirement, as research on brain trauma increased and became public knowledge over the past decade, that he realized the magnitude of the risk he was taking with that 297-game streak.

I have covered the Packers since Favre's second season with them (1993), and I can remember a few particularly hard hits that he took without being taken out of the game.

One of them came in the final game of the regular season against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Christmas Eve 1995 at Lambeau Field, when he attempted to score on a scrum in the third quarter but was stopped by a devastating hit from Steelers linebacker Greg Lloyd at the 1. The Packers called a timeout, Favre spat blood on the sideline, then returned to the game and threw a touchdown pass to Mark Chmura.

Another incident occurred in Week 2 of the 1998 season against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, also at Lambeau. Early in the fourth quarter, Favre ran a bootleg to the right and ducked to avoid being sacked. But as he prepared to throw, defensive end Regan Upshaw hit him in the shoulder and head at full speed from the blind side.

Favre's head and body fractured as he hit the ground. It must have been the hardest hit of his career and would certainly have been penalized under today's rules and probably even resulted in Upshaw being ejected. But there was no flag and Favre immediately jumped up, yelled congratulations to Upshaw and punched him in the helmet before returning to the huddle.

When he was still playing, these were heroic deeds that earned him the greatest admiration from friends and foes alike.

“It looked like he had been chopped in half,” Chidi Ahanotu, a teammate of Upshaw's who was on the field at the time, told me years later. “Then he just jumped back up. I swear my mouth was open. At that moment I knew he was Superman.”

Back then, it was seen as just the indomitable will that made Favre a beloved figure to teammates and Packers fans worldwide. Now we all know better.

Players need saving from themselves. The fact that he took too many of those hits and still stayed in the game is likely why Favre now has this cruel disease. It's unknown how many concussions and minor head injuries he suffered in his NFL career, not to mention college and high school, as well as a horrific car accident the summer before his senior year of college.

Only people suffering from Parkinson's or other degenerative neurological diseases know what Favre has been through since his diagnosis. It is undoubtedly horrific and frightening.

But for many Parkinson's patients, there is hope. My good friend and former boss Stu Courtney was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2012 at age 55. Doctors told him at the time that he could take medication for ten good years before his symptoms would get significantly worse, and ten years after the diagnosis, he retired because they did.

But then last year he found out he was a good candidate for a deep brain stimulation (DBS) implant, and in November he underwent the procedure. It was life-changing. The shaking of his hands, the worst symptom, has largely disappeared, his posture and gait have improved dramatically, and he no longer takes any medication.

When I called him about Favre on Tuesday night, he was jogging in preparation for a 5K race next month.

“I'm an evangelist for DBS,” he said. “It has given me my life back. I (often) forget that I have Parkinson's.”

Not all Parkinson's patients are candidates for deep brain stimulation (DBS), and Favre has not disclosed what treatments he is currently undergoing or will undergo, so we don't know what the future holds for him.

We know that regular exercise and good eating and sleeping habits are crucial to keeping symptoms at bay. He's been an avid athlete since retiring from the NFL, so that's a good place to start.

There's also a chance he'll use his platform to raise money for research into better treatments and perhaps even cures for Parkinson's and other neurological diseases. Maybe he'll even become the Michael J. Fox of the sports world.

If his health allows it, that would be more heroic than anything he has accomplished on the football field.

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