Counting the Days While My Mind Slips Away

by Ben Utecht

  Both the team attorney and Tim English called a variety of witnesses, either at the hearing or by using their deposition testimony, who were connected to the team. Of all of them, I found Sullivan’s testimony to be the most interesting. After all, he was the one who cleared me to return to full football activities, which opened the door for the team to cut me. Keep in mind, he is not a medical doctor. Nor did we believe he should have been the one to make the decision about my returning to play. The NFL issued a memo on November 24, 2009, less than one week after my release, where they said any player diagnosed with a concussion could not return to play until they had been evaluated and cleared by the team physician and by an independent physician who would be an “outstanding local neurosurgeon or neurologist.” Maybe that’s why the team moved so quickly in cutting me when they did. Maybe they knew a change was coming and they wanted to get me out before the new guidelines were adopted. I don’t know this to be true. It’s merely a guess on my part, but the timing sure looks suspicious.

  During his cross-examination of Sullivan at his deposition, Tim English focused his questions on how and why Sullivan cleared me to play. In his last evaluation of me, Sullivan wrote in his official report that I “should no longer be excluded from typical activities as a professional football player.” However, in the very same report Sullivan wrote that it would be ill-advised for me to return to playing competitive football. Those two statements certainly seemed inconsistent, which is why Tim English went right to the heart of what Sullivan meant by “typical activities as a professional football player.” He asked, “Let’s take a player in Ben’s situation. If instead of releasing Ben . . . you said, okay, Ben is ready to begin participating in routine football activities—”

  “He was doing routine football activities,” Sullivan interrupted.

  “Like what?”

  “Doing weights and aerobic activities,” Sullivan replied.

  When Tim pressed the questions, Sullivan admitted that he had no idea what kind of “weights and aerobic activities” football players even did. He said it was “[n]ot my thing.” What was confusing to me was the question of how I could be cleared to perform “football activities” when the person clearing me didn’t even know what those “activities” were. Even though Sullivan’s decision was confusing to me, I do believe he operated in his own personal good faith.

  The real issue behind my case, and this only became clear with time, was the nature of my injury. If I had blown out my knee, an MRI would have revealed the extent of the damage. A surgeon could then have gone in and fixed it. Because knee injuries are so common in football, teams know how long it takes someone to come back. Again, you can take another MRI to see how the healing process is coming along.

  But concussions are not like that. They often don’t show up on MRIs or X-rays or CT scans. In spite of the years of research that had been done into this field, the NFL still calls this an emerging science with much to be learned. Through 2004 and 2005 the NFL’s concussion committee churned out one paper after another that said concussed players could safely return to play in the same game in which the injury took place, even if they had lost consciousness.I For years they also claimed that the link between blows to the head and long-term brain problems is not conclusively established.

  In the midst of all of this, I found myself on IR with a concussion whose symptoms refused to go away. My case challenged everything the NFL had said about concussions prior to the November 24, 2009, memo. Even with that, the league did not want to admit the seriousness of injuries like mine, or their long-term implications both for players like me and the league as a whole. I believe that is why my case was moving so slowly. I was on the leading edge of a massive shift in the way football deals with head injuries.

  •  •  •

  When the one-day hearing ended, I thanked Tim for fighting so hard for me and asked how long he thought it might be before the arbitrator rendered his decision. “That’s hard to say,” Tim cautioned me. “We still have several more people to question through depositions, including Dr. Cantu and the neutral doctors who examined you. That’s going to take a few months. Once we have all the testimonies in, both sides will file briefs arguing for our sides of the question. Once all of that is in it will still probably take three to six months to get a decision.”

  “So it’s going to take a while,” I said with a sigh.

  “Hang in there, Ben,” Tim said with a smile. “You’re not in this alone. The players association is going to do everything we can to get justice for you.”

  All of the testimony from the hearing ran through my head throughout the three-hundred-mile drive back to Nashville. Once I arrived at our home in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of the city, I had to try to focus on more than the grievance. Karyn and I had found the perfect rental home, but we had a lot of work to do before our twins arrived. We thought for sure the twins would be fraternal and we hoped for a boy and a girl. But, with all the work involved with preparing for twins, we had an ultrasound that showed we were having two little girls. I couldn’t have been more excited. With one baby girl already, I felt confident I knew what to expect with more daughters.

  Finally having a place of our own after spending three months in our friends’ basement gave us a sense of belonging in our new hometown. Karyn immediately connected with our neighbors Winston and Rachel, who became lifelong friends. Between preparing for twins, which was going to give us three children under the age of two, and laying the groundwork for a life in music, I stayed really busy. The grievance was never far from my mind, especially late at night, but life kept me so busy that I could not obsess on it. During this period I did not notice any new memory gaps, although I continued to have some short-term memory issues. Most of these I chalked up to the unfamiliarity of a new city. Soon I had something much bigger to worry about.

  During Karyn’s twenty-week OB appointment, an ultrasound revealed a problem with our twins. The doctor diagnosed them with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. The condition only affects identical twins, and even then it is quite rare. Identical twins share a common placenta. However, in cases of TTTS, the blood vessels become intertwined, causing blood to be transfused disproportionally from one twin to the other. In some cases the condition causes the death of both babies. When Karyn told me what the doctor had said, she included his warning. “She told me not to go home and research it,” she told me. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why can’t we research it?” I asked.

  “She said the treatments are all risky and that researching it will only make me more worried than I should be.”

  Both of us felt completely out of control. The fact that we were having twins already made Karyn’s pregnancy high risk. The TTTS took the risk to an even higher level. I noticed over the next few weeks that the diagnosis had an impact on my wife’s spirit. I tried very hard to stay positive and encouraging for her, but it wasn’t working. About all I could do was pray for her and our babies.

  A few weeks after the diagnosis Karyn felt almost overwhelmed by what we faced. One afternoon she placed her hands on her stomach and started pouring out her heart to God. “Please, God, protect my precious babies,” she pleaded. All of a sudden a blanket of peace settled over her, so much so that she drifted off to sleep in the middle of the day. About an hour later she was suddenly awakened by a literal popping in her stomach. I wasn’t home at the time. Later she told me she could both feel and hear the sensation, yet she knew it wasn’t a bad thing. Nothing was going wrong inside her. Instead she felt an overwhelming reassurance that her prayers had been answered.

  •  •  •

  Karyn managed to carry our twins to one day short of thirty-six weeks, which was a miracle in itself. The typical gestation period for TTTS babies is between eighteen and thirty weeks. Every day the girls stayed in utero increased their chances of coming into the world without complications. We spent those weeks getting their room ready and picking out
the perfect names. After much back-and-forth, we first picked the name Katriel, a Hebrew name that means “God is my crown.” For our second, we decided to name the smaller of the two babies after my aunt Amy, who was never able to have children of her own due to a battle with breast cancer, a battle she won. The doctors warned us ahead of time that the smaller twin might have a harder time initially, so it just seemed right to name our little girl after a fighter like Aunt Amy. Her full name is Amy Joan. Joan is my grandmother’s name. The feminine of John and means “Gift of God.”

  Karyn’s doctors kept a very close eye on the twins. When we got to thirty-five weeks they informed us it was time. On November 9, 2010, we checked into the hospital and they induced labor. Even with twins Karyn hoped to deliver the girls naturally. However, for the second time the fetal monitor lost one of the girls’ heartbeats during a contraction. Our room filled up with every doctor and nurse in the hospital, or at least it felt like it. In a flash they had Karyn disconnected from the monitors and sprinted her bed down the hallway to the operating room for an emergency C-section. I ran alongside her, saying over and over, “It’s going to be okay. Our girls will be fine. You will see.”

  Once we reached the doors of the OR, the staff rushed Karyn through and the doors slammed in my face. Standing alone in the hallway, my thoughts went where I guess everyone’s go in a moment like that. I could not help but see the worst-case scenario coming true. The high-risk pregnancy, the TTTS, and now no heartbeat, I couldn’t help myself.

  A few minutes later a nurse came out. “Come with me,” she said. She escorted me into the OR, where she positioned me directly behind Karyn’s head. A medical blanket kept me from seeing what the doctors were doing. All through the procedure I looked down into my wife’s eyes. Tears streamed down her face. She was heartbroken that she could not have the girls naturally and scared to death of what might happen. I stroked her hair and whispered softly, “The girls will be okay. They need to get the girls out fast and this is the best way. Let’s just trust the Lord on this. He will carry us through.” I then told her how beautiful she was and how much I loved her.

  A baby’s cry filled the room. Karyn and I locked eyes. Both of us were so excited, yet we held our breath, waiting for the second cry. When it came I leaned down and kissed Karyn softly on the forehead. We were both so relieved.

  I did not get to hold either of my daughters in the operating room. Katriel had a minor breathing issue and they whisked her away very quickly. It did not take them long to resolve it. I held both girls for the first time in the viewing room. They seemed so tiny and fragile, although, for twins born at thirty-six weeks, their sizes were actually very good. Katriel entered the world at six pounds, seven ounces, while Amy Joan was a whopping four pounds, eleven ounces. They looked very, very small in my arms.

  •  •  •

  It didn’t take us long to figure out life with twin baby girls and another daughter under the age of two was not for the faint of heart. Between the sleepless nights and constant drain on Karyn of breastfeeding two babies at the same time, we adopted a rule in the house that whatever is said between midnight and 6:00 a.m. doesn’t count. The twins had different schedules, which pushed us to the limit. Okay, if I am being completely honest, they first pushed Karyn to her limit, because I thought I could sit back and help from a distance.

  One night the twins were wide awake, crying, each demanding different things. “Ben,” Karyn said to me, “I need some help.”

  “Okay,” I said, half-awake, from the bed. Then I did the most helpful thing I could think of. I raised up slightly and shushed the girls from the bed. After accomplishing such an important job, I fell back down and nodded back off to sleep.

  “Ben! Don’t you hear the girls? I need your help.”

  Startled, I sat back up. “Okay, okay, okay.” Then I shushed the girls again.

  Finally Karyn looked over at me and dropped a verbal bomb with words I had never heard come out of my wife’s mouth before or since. I shot out of bed, grabbed a twin, and then looked over at Karyn as if to say, “Whatever you need, I’ll do it.” She looked back at me and just started laughing, as did I.

  The next morning, neither of us said a word about the incident. After all, when you have twin babies, whatever is said between midnight and 6:00 a.m. doesn’t count.

  * * *

  I. Fainaru-Wada and Fainaru, League of Denial, Kindle ed., locs. 3150–51.

  CHAPTER 21

  “WHY WASN’T I INVITED?”

  MY POSTFOOTBALL IDENTITY CRISIS DID not resolve itself when we moved to Nashville. Yes, we moved to Music City for me to pursue a full-time career in music. However, when I declared myself a musician and singer as opposed to a football player, I faced another question: Who am I as an artist? As I transitioned from Indianapolis to Cincinnati I recorded my first album for the contemporary Christian market. It had more of a pop-worship style. While I was in Cincinnati I got to know Paul McCready from the Cincinnati Music Academy. Paul became my vocal coach and really transformed my voice to a level I had never achieved before. The training also revived my passion for the classical side of my training. Yet that wasn’t the style of music on the album I recorded and released. All of that brought me back to the question of who I was as an artist.

  Right before we moved to Nashville I thought I had my answer. I had a vision of creating a pop-classical style where I incorporated my big voice with string instrumentation. In a way, I really saw myself in the vein of Josh Groban. I believed this was a way I could carve out a niche for myself while also moving into the mainstream music market.

  The first few months after we moved to Nashville I started working to make my vision a reality. I sat down and started writing songs. Then I invested more than I should have into creating a four-song demo album. I hired actual string musicians, as opposed to creating something on a keyboard, and also brought in one of the best string arrangers in Nashville, David Hamilton. Because this EP was basically my demo CD for all the labels in town, I hired some of the best mixers available, and produced what I felt like was an incredible set of music. I loved the finished product. The songs hit exactly the target at which I aimed.

  Then I started taking the songs around town to all the labels. I didn’t have much trouble getting people to listen to them. However, the response was not what I had expected. Every single label came back and said, “Great voice. Big voice. I don’t get it.” I quickly learned how little I knew about the music industry. Everything, no matter what the genre, is driven by radio. The pop-classical style I hoped to master isn’t exactly burning up the airwaves. The whole thing blew up in my face. I thought I could become the next Josh Groban, only to discover that one Groban is enough.

  However, the story does not end there.

  In early spring of 2011, I flew out to New York for a gig at a jazz club. While in town I reconnected with my good friend Steven Reineke, the music director and conductor for the New York Pops. The two of us had gotten to know one another when Steven was with the Cincinnati Pops. I brought one of my EPs for Steven. By this point I was handing them out to anyone and everyone.

  Steven had invited me over for drinks. He also said, “I have someone in town I want you to meet.”

  “Okay,” I said, “who?”

  “Jim Brickman,” Steven replied.

  “The piano player?” I asked. That’s an understatement. Jim Brickman is one of the most accomplished adult contemporary musicians of all time, with multiple gold and platinum albums to his credit.

  “That’s him,” Steven said.

  Later that evening Jim came over to Steven’s apartment. Steven had more in mind than simply introducing me to one of his friends. He had me play Jim the demo EP I had created. When the music first started the look on Jim’s face told me he had trouble believing this sound came out of a football player. “This is really good,” Jim said. “I like it a lot.”

  “Would you like for me to sing something live for you no
w?” I asked. Steven had a beautiful piano in his apartment just for moments like this.

  “Sure. What do you know?” Jim replied.

  “ ’What about that Italian song you’ve been doing on tour with your current male vocalist? The song ‘Caruso’?”

  “But that’s in Italian,” Jim said.

  “That’s all right. If you will play it, I’ll sing it for you.”

  He did and I did. This impromptu audition resulted in a phone call a week or so later from Jim, inviting me to come to his studio in Cleveland for a formal tryout. Even though it was early spring, he was already finalizing plans for his next Christmas tour. While in Cleveland I was introduced to his longtime female vocalist, Anne Cochran. If I landed a spot on his tour, Anne and I would sing together.

  The audition went better than I could have ever dreamed. Not only did Jim hire me to tour with him on his next holiday tour; I also got to cut a holiday album for the tour. I stuck with the pop-classical style for the album, even going so far as to release it under my full name, Benjamin Utecht. “Benjamin” has a more classical sound than “Ben.” A side note on the album: it received a Dove Award nomination for holiday album of the year. I was very proud of how it turned out.

  Preparation for the tour hit high gear that summer. Karyn and I talked about what it was going to be like for me to go out and perform thirty-two shows in thirty cities during the holiday season. The prospect of her trying to hold the household together, alone, with three very small daughters did not thrill her. However, she was very supportive of me. “I think it’s a great idea that you do the tour. But we need help with the girls, Ben,” she said to me one night. “We should move home.”