\u201cAnd he told me that I should get tested, and I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to know\u2019, and he was like, \u2018you\u2019ve got to know\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wood said he had his first \u201creally bad\u201d concussion playing for an U21-grade side \u2013 after which he went home, went to sleep and lost his eyesight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in intensive care for two days, completely blind, and then I had to take a year off footy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that between the ages of 20 and 35, when he retired, he got knocked out twice a season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chances of coming through that unscathed are pretty much zero.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew there were things going on with me that weren\u2019t normal, but I just kept it dark, as you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wood said he had 133 scans done \u2013 108 of which were abnormal.<\/p>\n
He added that his brother Garth \u2013 a former rugby league professional \u2013 \u201cno doubt has got CTE\u201d and his father Barry \u2013 also a first-grade player \u2013 suffers from Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that\u2019s three generations of footballers there, we\u2019ve all had our fair share of knocks and have these CTE diagnoses, although my dad hasn\u2019t been tested and neither has my brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dementia Australia says CTE is linked to repeated head injuries, including concussions and sub-concussive impacts. The most common factors stem from contact sports, repeated falls, or assaults.<\/p>\n
\u201cCTE can only be definitively diagnosed after death through neuropathological examination,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring life, a medical specialist may diagnose you with suspected CTE, called \u2018traumatic encephalopathy syndrome\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAnd he told me that I should get tested, and I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to know\u2019,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,7818,97189,96690,796,7191,2740,71,106,82837,14731,89505,58203,111,139,69,9617,23940,10056,12860,1517,6926,213,43211,6378,8841,12072,97188,3006,4883],"class_list":["post-144109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-allegedly","tag-concussions","tag-cte","tag-diagnosis","tag-disease","tag-former","tag-from","tag-head","tag-knocks","tag-league","tag-nathan","tag-neurodegenerative","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-player","tag-related","tag-repeated","tag-revealed","tag-reveals","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-suffering","tag-suffers","tag-suspected","tag-symptoms","tag-utility","tag-warriors","tag-wood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}