Both Mays and Dr. Vernon Williams, sports neurologist and director of the
Kerlan-Jobe Center for Sports Neurology and Pain Medicine in Los Angeles
and a consulting team physician for the Rams, suggested Kizer may have
been affected without realizing it. They described the "postdrome
phase" of a migraine, where the headache is gone, but performance
is still impacted.
The Browns declined a request by cleveland.com to speak to their team doctors
about migraines.
"Most people say that even after the headache is successfully treated
they have kind of the leftover phase,'' Mays said. "They
feel like they've been run over by a semi-truck. ... There's usually
some lingering symptoms that (patients) have to deal with whether it's
due to the migraine or even the side effects of the medication used to
treat the headache.''
Williams agreed.
"There's absenteeism -- people who can't go to work because
they have a migraine -- but there's a condition that we call 'presenteeism'
-- they can get there, they can be there, they can be at work, but that
migraine still has an effect on their productivity, their accuracy. So
it's certainly within the realm of possibility that the headache was
improved or gone but there could still be some residual effect of the
migraine.''
Williams noted that "after the pain is gone, there's still a period
of time where the brain kind of re-establishes normalcy.''
Williams stressed that it's not difficult to differentiate between
a migraine and a concussion during a game.
"Many (players) have had them for years and know what the onset is
like,'' he said.
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