Brain aneurysm slows former CSU football player’s NFL dream

Bernard Blake’s brain is a bomb, and God holds the detonator.

At his family’s home in Bastrop, Texas, a week before beginning training camp with the Green Bay Packers, Blake began to get headaches. Migraines that prompted his mother to request he go to the hospital. Blake refused.

If he can find a way to avoid seeing a doctor, he’ll do it. When he dislocated his shoulder in the middle of the 2013 college football season, he took it upon himself to pop it back into place each week until it was basically limp while playing for CSU in the New Mexico Bowl.

But those headaches grew more severe by the day until one morning he woke up and couldn’t see out of his left eye. Blake’s mother rushed him to the ER. Doctors performed a few tests, took a couple of scans. It was only a sinus infection. Or so everyone thought.

After nurses relieved the pressure behind his eye, Blake felt fine and went home to start packing his bags for Green Bay, ready to build off what was an impressive rookie minicamp as an undrafted free agent. Then his phone rang. It was the hospital. The doctor found more than a sinus infection.

Blake had a brain aneurysm. It was small, only 2½ millimeters in length, but a brief glance at the catherization image shows the obvious protrusion of an artery on the right side of his brain, and when he told the Packers’ medical staff about it, they released him.

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A non-football illness, the transaction report read.

“The case studies for that size (of aneurysm) say it’s essentially a zero percent chance of it popping, but you don’t want to say it’s never going to happen, because nothing controls it but God saying it’s time to pop,” Blake said. “Head trauma, from what we know, has no effect on it.

“It’s one of those things where it’s symptom-free and you might not know you have it until it’s too late. I’m just blessed I found mine in time.”

Green Bay released Blake so he could have a surgery to remove the aneurysm, but the more research he did, he learned any procedure has a higher risk of brain damage or death than choosing to leave it alone.

You can’t play football when you’re dead, and next to God, there’s nothing Blake loves more than the gridiron. Surgery was never an option.

That was three months ago, and the NFL season is now three weeks old. The only team that’s given him a real look is Oakland, but he tried out for the Raiders when their roster was full. So now he waits, working out and spending his afternoons as a volunteer coach at Bastrop High.

For all he knows — for all doctors know — football didn’t cause the small balloon in his brain. Football caused the concussions he’s endured, sure, just not the aneurysm. But the reality is Blake is a liability to any team, especially with the increased and unwanted attention the NFL is receiving regarding head injuries.

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Not helping the situation is Boston University’s recent study finding more than 95 percent of deceased NFL players suffered the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the upcoming Will Smith film “Concussion,” even if CTE and aneurysms aren’t connected.

Basically, if your neurological health isn’t 100 percent, you raise a red flag for any team trying to fill a roster spot with a free agent.

Frustrating doesn’t begin to describe what Blake is feeling; however, he refuses to stress about it, trusting his fate to his faith. If he ever does start to get worked up about the matter, Blake thinks about his friend Jack Miller, a 10-year-old fan adopted by the Colorado State University football team who’s had a malignant tumor in the center of his brain since age 3.

“If Jack can be happy and overcome when he has brain cancer, then what do I have to complain about?” Blake asked.

He does take solace in knowing the reason he hasn’t yet landed with a team is because of a medical condition and not a lack of skill. He has 4.3 speed, hits receivers with reckless abandon and had 23 pass breakups in his final two seasons at Colorado State University. What’s not to love?

A tiny imperfection that may have very well been there since childhood.

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Blake has a follow-up appointment with his doctors in February to re-evaluate his status. If the balloon has inflated beyond 4 millimeters, risk of hemorrhage and stroke becomes exponentially greater. If it hasn’t grown, then suit him up.

He’s not walking away from football.

“People ask me all the time if I’m scared. I’m not. I tell people all the time that I’m brain dead from football, anyway,” Blake said with a laugh. “I’ve been playing so long and I play so physical, that I don’t think about my head. If I have a concussion, I’m going to go out there and play. I don’t see a brain aneurysm being different.

“I’m strong in my faith. If God wants it to pop, it will pop, but right now, I’m still alive.”

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.