Wife Of Ex-NFL Player Rob Kelly Shared Horrifying Details Of His Post-Football Dementia

Google defines dementia as “a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning.” That definition sounds exactly how the wife of ex-NFL player Rob Kelly describes her husband in his post-football life.

As we have seen, including during this year’s Super Bowl, the NFL has repeatedly failed to properly deal with players who have suffered head injuries.

Just prior to Super Bowl LII, the New York Times ran a commercial called “Investigating Concussions in the N.F.L. — The Truth Has a Voice” which once again reminded us that the prevalence of brain disease in NFL players is frightening.

Along with that commercial, Emily Kelly, the wife of ex-NFL player Rob Kelly, wrote an article for the Times called “I’m the Wife of a Former N.F.L. Player. Football Destroyed His Mind.”

Kelly, who played safety for four seasons for the New Orleans Saints and spent one on injured reserve with the New England Patriots, was only 28-years-old when he retired because of an injury to a nerve between his neck and shoulder.

Now, at age 43, Kelly’s quality of life has deteriorated to the point that his wife Emily wrote that he “went from being a devoted and loving father and husband to someone who felt like a ghost in our home.”

Over time, I had started to notice changes. But this was different and around 2013, things had become much more frightening.

He lost weight. It seemed like one day, out of the blue, he stopped being hungry. And often he would forget to eat. I’d find full bowls of cereal left around the house, on bookshelves or the fireplace mantel. The more friends and family commented on his gaunt frame, the more panicked I became. By 2016, he had shrunk to 157 pounds. That’s right, my 6-foot-2 football-player husband weighed 157 pounds (down from around 200 when he was in the N.F.L.).

Emily states that her husband has never had a diagnosed brain injury, never took steroids, and hasn’t had a drink in eight years. Yet, at age 43, living with him has become, as she writes, “exhausting.”

Rob’s mood swings scare me sometimes, and I always have to be in tune with early signs of his agitation. I try to protect him from stress so he won’t be overwhelmed. It’s exhausting.

Our fights went in bizarre circles and were never resolved. He would be irrationally upset about one thing but would quickly lose track and begin rambling about something that had no connection to the topic at hand. Every argument we had ended with me thinking: “This isn’t normal. This is not what couples fight about. Something’s wrong.”

Rob now has fits of paranoia, bringing bizarre accusations against his wife, and at one point went a couple of months one winter where “he couldn’t muster up the energy to speak.”

“My questions went unanswered until I simply stopped asking them. The silence was unnerving,” wrote Emily.

After years of little to no sleep, he alternated between sleeping either three hours a night or 20. I’d wake up to find every blind and curtain in the house closed and Rob sitting on the sofa with a blank expression on his face. He no longer felt comfortable driving, refused to leave the house and cut off contact with everyone.

Specific details about how he wanted his funeral to be, and his demand that he be cremated, were brought up with excruciating frequency. One particularly dark time, he went five days without eating anything; he drank only water and a few swigs of chocolate milk. He was suffering deeply and barely surviving. My love and affection seemed to offer no comfort or solace. I felt helpless.

In 2013, the NFL player retirement plan and supplemental disability plan awarded him total and permanent disability benefits. When examined by a clinician, he concluded that “repeated concussion is very likely to have caused Mr. Kelly’s neuropsychological dysfunction.”

Emily says she reads articles where people write comments like “they know what they signed up for,” she writes that back then no one worried about an A.L.S. diagnosis or a C.T.E.-related suicide. And she’s right.

Read Emily Kelly’s entire story over at the Times.