Who Does This To People?

Lorraine Dixon is one of a growing number of women left to care for men whose brains have been addled by football. This is the story of their struggle.

- Mark Fainaru -Wada and Simon Baumgart

I’m sitting here outside the hospital in my car taking deep breaths. I was told I need to take off of work to be trained on how to administer the [tracheostomy tube] and keep it clean and I actually think I’m in a state of shock: 

How do I do this and work full time? 

How do I do this and take care of a 20-year-old special needs son? 

How do I do this and run around with a 9-year-old who dreams of modeling, acting, being a pageant princess and still maintain her GPA and make sure that she is a well balanced 9-year-old? 

How do I maintain the house and cook and clean?

When do I work out? 

And my thoughts go to the NFL and I am numb, they knew but because of money hid it?

Who does this to people, to families?

IT’S A HOT summer evening in Dallas, and Lorraine Dixon is trying desperately not to fall apart. She’s holed up in her car outside of William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, terrified. Tubes have been surgically inserted into her husband’s throat and stomach, procedures designed to help him eat and breathe.

But in reality, they represent more work for Lorraine and heightened fears that the end is near. The doctors said her husband had three to five years to live. This is year four.

Lorraine’s mind is racing, but she can’t speak her thoughts, can’t give them life, so instead she texts them to a reporter who has been pressing for details of a life shaped by football in ways she never could have imagined.