"James Kelly, a concussion specialist at the University of Colorado department of neurosurgery, told Gagne on Wednesday that his initial brain injury had never healed. Consequently, it got progressively worse with subsequent blows to the head.
"It's one concussion," Gagne said Kelly told him. "It got worse and worse. Every time I was getting hit to the head, the symptoms were coming back."
This does not bode well for players like Gerald Wallace, who suffered his 4th concussion in four years:
"Wallace visited a neurologist Tuesday, four days after the forward was knocked unconscious when he was hit in the face with an inadvertent elbow from Sacramento's Mikki Moore. It was Wallace's fourth concussion in four years, an all-too-familiar statistic for football players, but almost unheard of in basketball.
While Wallace is out indefinitely, there are concerns about his long-term health and questions about what can be done to protect him when he returns.
Let's hope that Wallace takes his time coming back. Concussion testing guidelines can only take you so far, but if the players are going to deny symptoms, there isn't much to protect them.
