NFL Players Better Protect Their Organs

Every year in all sports there seems to be an injury du jour. It started a few years ago with rotator cuff injuries in baseball- every pitcher had to have one. Then an achilles epidemic swept football. Recently the fashionable ailment in a number of sports has been the dreaded "high ankle sprain", which had to replace the low, or regular ankle sprain.

But no one, not even the trained medical professionals on NFL sidelines could predict the current new wave of injuries sweeping the league- internal organ damage.

Pittsburgh Steeler QB Ben Roethlisberger started the whole fad off when he needed and emergency appendectomy in training camp, which was unrelated to his motorcycle face plant months earlier.

Then Buccaneers QB Chris Simms' spleen suffered a similar fate when, after absorbing a brutal pounding from the Carolina Panthers 2 weeks ago, he needed an emergency splenectomy immediately following the loss.

And now we have the crazy story of Baltimore (and former Tampa Bay) CB Corey Ivey. He was aboard a flight back to B'more with the rest of his teammates after their 13-3 loss to the Broncos in Denver last night. After experiencing quite a bit of pain & discomfort in his side following the game, the doctors on board called for the plane to make an emergency landing in Pittsburgh.
Upon arriving at an area hospital doctors diagnosed Ivy with a kidney tear, not considered life-threatening, but seemingly pretty painful nonetheless.

When will the madness end? If the trendy injury theory holds true, not for a while. These things always seem to last at least a full season and sometimes spread into the next year as well; remember the ghastly patellar tendon tear pandemic of 1997-99?

So memo to all NFL players for 2006: Please protect your organs. A gallbladder is a terrible thing to waste.