by Bennet Omalu
The NIH was not the only government entity that acted as though I had nothing to do with the discovery of CTE. Around the time the NFL held the conference to which they did not invite me, the Congressional Judiciary Committee held a public hearing to look into CTE, which was organized by Michigan congressman John Conyers. This hearing was the first of its kind. The commissioner of the NFL was called to speak, as were some doctors from Boston University. One of Congressman Conyers’ assistants contacted me to formally invite me to the hearing. However, two days before the very highly publicized meeting, the same assistant called to tell me my invitation had been rescinded. He had no explanation when I asked why.
After I hung up the phone, I sat down and wept. Even the United States Congress is ostracizing me, I thought. Why? What have I done? It seemed like, since I was not yet an American citizen, I had nothing to contribute. This just struck me as contradictory to everything I ever believed about America. We are a nation of immigrants. Everyone came from somewhere else. I was not yet officially a citizen, but I was on the pathway to citizenship. I loved America, and yet this made me feel very much like the feelings were not mutual. Let me be clear: I do not think this was purely an anti-immigrant stance. Instead, I believe that in the hearts of those who made the decisions about the congressional hearing, my presence would have made everyone very uncomfortable, because I had essentially forced this situation on Congress. Bennet Omalu, a newly arrived American, had called into question the most American of sports—the sport that is intertwined into the culture, society, and identity of America. As Alec Baldwin (playing Julian Bailes) said to Will Smith (playing me) in the movie Concussion, in America “God is number one,” which he said while holding up two fingers, and “football is number two,” holding up one finger.
I also believe a large measure of my being shunned came because I had embarrassed those who should have discovered CTE long before I ever conducted Mike Webster’s autopsy. The leading neurological and neuropathological researchers in the best academic and research centers in the country did not discover something that should have been very obvious for at least as long as football players wore plastic helmets and turned what should have been a piece of protection into a weapon. When I discovered the tangles of tau proteins in Mike Webster’s brain, I was just three months out from completing my fellowship in neuropathology. No one with so little experience should have made such an important discovery. Discoveries like this should be made in the finest research hospitals and universities by middle-aged men with decades of experience. It seemed that the discovery by someone like me embarrassed them, and if I were to be invited to come to their hearings and meetings, my very presence might have reminded them of how they were failing the players they proclaimed to love and admire. No one wants to feel that level of discomfort. It was easier for all involved to pretend I did not exist, to render me a nonentity.
• • • •
The problems with the AANP and Congress and the NIH and all the rest were just beginning in 2007, which proved to be a very, very difficult year. Dr. Cyril Wecht had been indicted the year before and had subsequently resigned from the Allegheny County medical examiner’s office. In the last chapter, I wrote about the difficulties I had with his replacement. As time went on, the tension in the office grew more pronounced. Finally I knew I had no choice but to resign my position. This decision placed me in a difficult spot. I had long since started the process of working toward becoming a United States citizen. That had been my goal from the time I arrived in Seattle. I fell in love with America from the start, especially after I moved to New York and experienced the wonderful diversity that makes America what it is. In spite of our flaws, this is still the place where people are the most free to pursue God’s perfection within them and to become whatever we want to become. Where else but in America could my story be told, along with the stories of scores of others who have experienced the American Dream here?
However, I still had many years left before I met the residency requirements that would allow me to become a citizen. For me to maintain my visa, I had to have a job. When I quit the medical examiner’s office in Pittsburgh, the clock started ticking. If I did not find a job in six months, I would be deported with no hope of returning. Up to this point, I not only had continued to work; I had also continued to pursue every educational opportunity I could reach for. My father had preached to me the power of education, and I took his words to heart. While in Pittsburgh, I completed two fellowships, earned a master’s degree in public health, and another master’s degree in business administration from one of the top business schools in the world—Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. I eventually earned five board certifications in five subspecialties of medicine. I was busy.
However, all my work would be for naught if I did not find a new job. Resigning from the medical examiner’s office was one of the hardest decisions of my life. Prema and I were building a nice life here. Work on our “million-dollar dream home” was nearly complete. We were expecting our first child. Prema had finished her education and had opportunities to work if she wanted. Life had come together for us in Pittsburgh. We were living the American Dream. But now everything was in doubt.
And then one of the worst moments of my life happened. I was at church on a Saturday morning getting the sound system ready for a funeral service. The matriarch of a prominent African-American family in Pittsburgh had passed away, and her funeral Mass was at St. Benedict the Moor. The church was going to be full, and many important persons would be attending the Mass. Father Carmen counted on me to take care of so many things. My phone rang, and it was Prema. She sounded distraught on the phone. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m bleeding,” she said.
I dropped everything and rushed home. I picked her up and took her to the closest hospital’s emergency room. In a short time, our worst fears were confirmed: She had a miscarriage. I was devastated, not just because we lost the baby, but by Prema’s pain. I did not want to see her suffer. She is such a lovely, reserved, down-to-earth person—simply an angel. To see her sobbing broke my heart. I wept too. Prema did not deserve this. I held her and promised her that it would be okay. God will bless us with another child very soon.
After a couple of hours, the hospital released us, and we went home. I called a close friend to come and assist us since we had no family in Pittsburgh. It was just Prema and me. I sped back to church to make it on time for the funeral Mass. We could not let Father Carmen and the mourning family down. We had to be there for them. During the Mass, I prayed that the Holy Spirit would descend upon Prema and grant her peace in this time of trial. She was too good a person to suffer this pain. God answered our prayers sooner than we expected. To Him be all praise.
Chapter Twenty
Finding Life in the Wilderness
On August 17, 2007, Prema and I said good-bye to the city we had grown to love and good-bye to the dream home in which we would never live, and we moved as far away as we could from everything connected to football and the NFL. I had accepted the position to become the new chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County, California. I almost missed out on the opportunity. Several unsolicited calls came to me in Pittsburgh from a Captain somebody from a funny-sounding place in California. Since I did not recognize the name or the number, I ignored the call. So many angry phone calls came to our home that I had grown weary of even picking up the receiver. That might have been the end of it if a friend and colleague, a man who served as a resident under me while I was a fellow in neuropathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, had not called. “Bennet, a guy from California is trying to reach you. He says he has called you many times, but you do not return his calls.”
I immediately became defensive. “Oh, do you know this guy?”
“Yes, Bennet. I’m the one who gave him your number. He wants to hire you,” my friend said.
“Hire me? For what?” This shows how jaded I had become in the
midst of all the attacks I had endured connected to my work on CTE.
“To come to California and become the county’s new forensic pathologist. I work in this county as the director of the medical laboratory in the county hospital. They need a top-notch, highly competent pathologist like you to come in here and bring the whole operation up-to-date. Are you interested?”
Since I did not have a job and since I needed to find one quickly to avoid being deported back to Nigeria, I was indeed interested.
I called the captain back. He offered to fly Prema and me out to the San Francisco area for a five-day interview. This sounded like a vacation to me, so I accepted. When we arrived, we were treated like royalty. The difference between this and what we had endured over the previous few years was stark. Prema loved the place. She was ready to move right away. Me—I was hesitant. In California, the county coroner’s office falls under the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department, placing police officers in charge of forensic autopsies. I had flashbacks to Nigeria, a corrupt country with a big government. The sheriff-coroner system is very out-of-date, as is the way in which the coroner is an elected office in most parts of America. The elected system seemed preferable to what I found in California. I was ready to turn the job down when Prema uttered five words that settled the question. “Bennet,” she said, “I like it here.” Then she added, “I want to raise my children here.”
That settled it. We moved to Lodi, California, a community in the California wine country less than two hours from San Francisco, one hour from Napa Valley, and less than three hours from Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Coincidentally, I lived in Lodi, New Jersey, for a few months while doing my residency in New York. That particular Lodi did not work out, but this one was the perfect fit for the needs of my soon-to-be growing family.
I found peace in Lodi. The community did not revolve around a professional football team, like Pittsburgh does with regard to the Steelers. While San Francisco has an NFL team—and I imagine many people here are rabid fans—football culture did not permeate every aspect of social life in our new community. I needed that. A CTE research group in Boston had already started grabbing headlines. They had effectively pushed me out of the picture when it came to football and brain trauma. By this point, I was ready to oblige them. I was ready to settle into Lodi and get on with life. Eventually, we sold our house in Pittsburgh. Because we sold the house at the bottom of the housing market crash, we ended up losing close to a quarter of a million dollars on it. To me, this was one of the sacrificial costs of meeting Mike Webster. It was far less than the price he paid.
• • • •
In spite of my desire to remove myself from football and the NFL, I continued my brain research. In my new house in Lodi, I converted my garage into a brain tissue lab. Every morning, I woke up early, pulled the two cars out onto the driveway, turned on the floodlights, mounted my mobile table, and went to work. It was not work. Examining brains is something I truly enjoy. I guess I was born to be a neuropathologist. There in my garage, I examined the brains of a few famous athletes, but it was not about who they had been in life. I approached each individual with the same care, love, and reverence I show all of my patients. I did not conduct this research to make a name for myself, nor did I want to make headlines. This was a journey to find answers about CTE. I wanted to know how it spreads and why some people are more susceptible to it than others. While the Boston group grabbed more headlines, I was content to do my work in my garage. After all, many people have changed the world as they worked out of their garages. Because I did not have anyone funding my research, I had to support myself with whatever I had at my disposal. I continued to entrust Jonette Werley with processing the tissue samples, just as she had Mike Webster, Terry Long, Andre Waters, Justin Strzelczyk, Chris Benoit, Tom McHale, and every person whose brain I examined. She had the Midas touch. More than that, the way she works behind the scenes without recognition makes her my hero.
Between my new job and my continued research, I stayed very busy. I also joined the faculty at the University of California, Davis, Department of Medical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Not a day went by that I did not read at least one scientific paper or textbook or professional article. My father preached that education empowers you to become anyone you want to be. I listened. Even after I stopped pursuing degrees, I continued pursuing an education, as I still do to this day and hope to do until I draw my last breath.
One morning, I awoke early, as was my habit. I sat down in my home office and looked out the window into the peaceful darkness and quiet of the night. I heard the sound of a car driving in front of my neighbor’s house. The sound of the car was followed by the sound of a newspaper landing on his porch. I laughed a bit to myself at how old school my neighbor was that he still took the daily paper when out of the blue in the quiet of that moment, I heard a voice in my heart. Bennet, the voice said, look at all the books you have read over the years. I looked up at my bookshelf, which was loaded with books about everything from pathology, medicine, and public health to business and self-help. Then the voice in my heart said, You have read all these books over the course of your lifetime, Bennet, but you have not read through the only book that should truly matter to you, the only book that should be closest to you as a child of the living God and a follower of Jesus Christ.
Most people, at the sound of that voice, would have immediately pulled their Bible off the bookshelf and started reading. I could not do that because I did not have a Bible there to read. I had read bits and pieces of the Bible over the years, and I had heard it expounded upon in church all my life. Men like Father Carmen poured the Bible into me as they invested their lives into mine. But I did not have a Bible in my home to call my own. Just writing this right now leaves me embarrassed. How could I claim to be a Christ follower and not even own a copy of His Word?
I sat down at my computer and logged onto the Internet. Instead of checking my email, as was my habit, I Googled an online Christian bookstore and ordered a copy of the New American Bible. I clicked “overnight” on the delivery options. This was not my first time to purchase a Bible. I had bought Bibles before for myself and to give to others, but at that moment in my life, I had no Bible I could call my own. I had given away my last Bible several years prior to an addict I tried to help get off drugs.
After ordering the Bible, I tried to get to work, but I could not. I was too disappointed in myself to devote the rest of the morning to the pursuits I had chased while leaving God on the periphery. During my times of trouble, I had poured out my heart to Him and clung to Him by faith. He never let me down, but now I felt like I had let Him down. Terribly. I was so depressed that I went back to bed and back to sleep. I did not accomplish anything that day. The Bible I had ordered could not get to my house fast enough.
This was a turning point for me. Since that day, I have spent time every morning reading the Bible. It enlivens my spirit and invigorates and empowers my life. Over the previous years, I had fought so many battles in the world. Until I devoted myself to reading the Bible, I never realized how ill equipped I had been for those fights. More than that, spending time in the Bible keeps me from being immersed in and consumed by the affairs of this world. I believe I can see and understand the world system marked by conformational intelligence much better when my mind is shaped by God’s Word. I have become mindful that I cannot let the conformations of society, the ways of the world, the earthly affairs of my life, or my daily burdens and worries eat up, scorch, or choke the word of God in me.1 As Saint Paul instructed the Romans, “Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”2
• • • •
I needed the daily transformation and encouragement the Bible gave me because the marginalization that began with the publication of my first paper kicked into high gear in 2007 and 2008. I was surprised and appalled when my att
ention was drawn to a trend in the New York Times where the newspaper appeared to be joining the NFL to dehumanize me. When I reviewed the Times articles on CTE, a trend seemed obvious. In 2007, I was recognized for discovering CTE in several articles, but then as time went on, my name was systematically eliminated and never mentioned in their historical narrative of CTE. As more articles were published in the paper, other American doctors began to be recognized and even given the credit for discovering CTE. The name Omalu disappeared from the narrative in the most influential newspaper in America. Why such a respected paper would perpetuate a lie in such an un-American way baffled me. Was it because I was an immigrant, or I was black? I really do not know.
The New York Times was only the beginning. I wrote a third paper, one that focused on my discovery of CTE in the brain of Andre Waters. I started on this paper before leaving Pittsburgh. Even before I finished the paper, I had more and more cases come to me—from Justin Strzelczyk, Chris Benoit, and Tom McHale to Gerald Small, Altie Taylor, and others. I even discovered CTE in military veterans who had been diagnosed with PTSD and died from drug overdoses and suicide. However, I chose to focus the third paper solely upon Andre Waters, just as I had focused upon Mike Webster and Terry Long in the first two papers.
Once I finished the paper and went through the usual round of edits with my coauthors, I submitted it to Neurosurgery once again. Initially, the editors accepted the paper and started the review process that had by now become very familiar to me. The editors, reviewers, and I went back and forth with all the usual steps that must be taken before a paper is published. I reviewed references, corrected some editorial issues, and fixed all the typographical errors. The paper was nearly ready for publication when, like a thief in the night, Dr. Michael Apuzzo called and said, “I’ve changed my mind.” When I asked why, he offered no explanation.