Teen football player diagnosed with CTE after suicide, family speaks out Thursday at 6 p.m.
“We knew about CTE,” said Christie Bramwell,” but I was always more worried about was he going to get tackled wrong and get paralyzed.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Wyatt Bramwell was a stand-out high school football player, a loving son and a straight-A student who was on his way to studying engineering at the University of Missouri when he tragically took his own life.
“He had such a humble heart, you could hug him and just feel purity,” said Wyatt’s mother Christie Bramwell. “So, for him to just shut down, and not share whatever he was having going on in his head, that’s hard to accept.”
Two years after his death, researchers at Boston University made a shocking discovery that started to provide Wyatt’s parents with some answers, when they diagnosed him with stage 2 chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Better known as CTE, the disease is a degenerative brain disorder that is most often associated with deceased NFL players and closely mimics Alzheimer’s.
Wyatt’s diagnosis marked the first time that an advanced form of CTE was found in a teenage football player.
“We knew about CTE,” said Christie Bramwell,” but I was always more worried about was he going to get tackled wrong and get paralyzed.”
Thursday night on WSMV4 at 6, Wyatt’s parents are sharing their son’s story, hoping it helps other parents with children playing contact sports spot early signs of the disease.
“We don’t look at 18-year-old perfect physical specimens and think, ‘I wonder if his mind is working like an 80 or 90-year-old person right now,” said Bill Bramwell, Wyatt’s father. “But we’re starting to find out we’re not alone, there’s a lot of people losing teenagers. So looking back at Wyatt’s diagnosis, you start wondering if their stories are like his, with CTE causing cognitive damage.”
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