The fear lays in not knowing

“You want to know why am I feeling this way, what’s going on, am I going to be OK? And they can’t give you answers right away. So it’s scary.” Ben Roethlisberger

“When I hit him, I landed face-first on the ground and couldn’t move anything,” Landry said. “At the time, I was asking people to just turn me over so I could try to move. And I never moved.”

When the Ravens trainers and doctors arrived on the field, they managed to roll Landry over and asked him to wiggle his toes. The doctors told him he had wiggled his toes, but Landry didn’t know. He couldn’t feel his toes. In fact, he couldn’t feel anything.

Landry, a fifth-round draft choice in 2006, was taken from the field on a stretcher and placed in ambulance. By then, he said he started having feeling in his hands. By the time he arrived at a local hospital, he said “I was back functioning.”

Nonetheless, Landry was given a CT scan and magnetic resonance imaging exam, which revealed a spinal cord contusion between his C3 and C4 vertebrae. In effect, he had a bruise on his spinal canal. Spinal cord contusions are different from spinal cord concussions because they are totally different medical pathologies. Spinal cord contusions are considered worse.

Former Green Bay Packers tight end Jermichael Finley retired at age 28 after he sustained a spinal cord contusion — a two-centimeter bruise on his spine — in an October 2013 game against the Browns. Several weeks later, he had surgery to fuse his C3 and C4 vertebrae and was eventually cleared by doctors six months later to resume playing. However, no team would take Finley, not even the Packers, after he failed a physical. He announced his retirement almost two years to the day after his injury.

Landry’s teammate, linebacker Jameel McClain, sustained a spinal cord contusion in a Dec. 9, 2012, game against the Washington Redskins and missed the rest of the season, which included a Super Bowl run. But, after 10 months rest and no surgery, he returned to action in a game against the Steelers and played two more seasons.

Landry didn’t need surgery, at least, not right away, but one side of his body was still pretty weak. Still, he remained overnight for observation and went home the next day.

“I couldn’t pick my arm all the way up,” Landry was recalling the other day on the phone from his home in Jacksonville, Fla. “I was able to do things, but it came along slowly. I was getting a lot of tingling through my hands, through my legs. Doing quick moves with my neck I’d get spasm sensations. It took a whole season before I could recover from that.”

Landry didn’t play again that season. The Ravens placed him on injured reserve and kept hope he could play again. During the offseason, Landry underwent spinal fusion surgery and everything changed. The tingling went away.

After watching his teammates lose in the AFC championship game to the Steelers, Landry was eager to get back to training camp in 2009, eager to test his neck and spine. There was little, if any, worry about what had happened 10 months earlier.

“That left a bad taste in my mouth,” Landry said about the loss to the Steelers. “I wanted to get back out there and see what we could do. By the time we got to training camp, the first live period, I got a blitz and I tried to hit someone as hard as I could to see how my neck would hold up.”

It did. Landry played six more seasons in the NFL, eventually leaving the Ravens in free agency in 2011 to join the Jacksonville Jaguars for two seasons. He finished his career in 2014 after playing two more seasons with the New York Jets.

“I never had a problem after that,” Landry said.

He is one of the lucky ones.

‘An everyday thing’

The Ravens, who face the Steelers in a nationally televised game Sunday night at Heinz Field, know what the Steelers are going through.

They watched Landry get carted from the field nine years ago the same way the Steelers watched inside linebacker Ryan Shazier get placed on a board and carted away from Paul Brown Stadium Monday night, not long after he made what appeared to be a routine tackle on wide receiver Josh Malone.

“It looked like an everyday thing,” Landry said. Just like Landry’s tackle. But Shazier hasn’t been able to leave the hospital. He underwent spinal stabilization surgery Wednesday night at Presbyterian Hospital, but no diagnosis of his condition has been released by his doctors. Several of his teammates were told in the locker room after the victory against the Bengals that Shazier had a spinal cord concussion — the same injury former Steelers quarterback Tommy Maddox sustained in a 2002 game against the Tennessee Titans in Nashville — but there has been no official verification of that by his medical team.

Maddox, though, isn’t the only Steelers quarterback to suffer that injury. Ben Roethlisberger was carted from the field in the 2008 season finale against the Cleveland Browns after losing feeling in his arms and feet following a sack. He was diagnosed with a spinal cord concussion. Roethlisberger, though, quickly regained feeling in his arms and feet and didn’t even spend the night in the hospital.

Keep in mind, no injury, even if it sounds similar, directly translates from one player to another. Every condition is unique because of the varying levels of the injury and an individual’s anatomy.

Maddox was watching the game against the Bengals the other night when he saw Shazier get injured.

“Just seeing the attention they were giving him and the things going on, you start having flashbacks to certain things,” Maddox said on the phone from Decatur, Texas, where he is the head baseball coach and assistant football coach at Decatur High School. “I was hoping it wasn’t anything serious, but I could tell the way everyone was reacting, you could tell it was serious. You start to think, you hope he’s OK, physically and mentally.”

That’s what everyone thought when Maddox was hit by linebacker Keith Bulluck — likewise, on a play that seemed relatively harmless — near the end of the third quarter in a Nov. 17, 2002, game won by the Titans, 31-23. Maddox doesn’t remember much, if any, of the particulars. He remembers team physician Dr. Anthony Yates and orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Bradley talking to him, explaining what was happening. Otherwise, all he remembers is how scared he was when he couldn’t move his arms and legs.

“I don’t know if you’re in shock, but it didn’t sink in till I couldn’t move my arms and couldn’t move my legs,” Maddox said. “That was the part when I got scared, that this might be a different way of life.”

Maddox was taken to a local hospital for testing and observation. Within three to four hours, all his feeling returned, but doctors had him sleep in a brace to limit his movement as a precaution. He returned to Pittsburgh the following day when Dan Rooney sent his private jet to get him.

“The last thing I could move was my right foot, and that bothered me most because I could move everything else,” Maddox said. “As an athlete, you kinda feel every pain and you know what it feels like. Not being able to feel is something you’re not used to. It’s a scary feeling.”

But that was the extent of his issues. Maddox did not play the next two games, but returned to start Dec. 8 at Heinz Field against the expansion Houston Texans. It was a nightmare return for Maddox, who had two interceptions and a fumble returned for touchdowns. The Texans won, 24-6, even though they had only three first downs and were outgained by the Steelers, 422 yards to 47.

That nightmare, though, was much better than the alternative.

“I don’t think you have reservations about going back out there, but you’d be lying f you said you didn’t think about it,” Maddox said. “I was anxious to get hit that first time, make sure everything was OK. And once you did you just move on.”

‘You think of your family’

It was, essentially, a meaningless season-finale game against the Cleveland Browns, Dec. 28, 2008, a game that would not change the Steelers’ postseason position, no matter the outcome.

But, toward the end of the second quarter, it suddenly became meaningful to Roethlisberger.

Sandwiched on a pass play by two Browns defenders — linebackers Willie McGinest and D’Qwell Jackson — Roethlisberger was driven to the turf and never got up. His head struck the ground as McGinest drove him backward.

Roethlisberger didn’t move for 15 minutes, unable to feel doctors using needles to prick his arm. His facemask was removed from his helmet and he was placed on a stretcher and carted from the field. As he was leaving, lying faceup on the cart, he gave the thumbs-up sign to the fans at Heinz Field, who had grown uneasily quiet.

The Steelers announced Roethlisberger had sustained a concussion. But medical tests revealed he had a spinal cord concussion, the same type of injury Maddox endured six years earlier.

“I was scared,” Roethlisberger recalled the other day. “You think about your family watching. I remember thinking, ‘ What’s going on?’ You want answers and you want them right away because you want to know why am I feeling this way, what’s going on, am I going to be OK? And they can’t give you answers right away. So it’s scary.”

Roethlisberger was taken to Presbyterian Hospital, though he quickly regained the feeling in his arms. He didn’t even remain overnight for observation. And he never lost sensation in his legs.

Because the Steelers had a first-round playoff bye, Roethlisberger had an extra week to recover. He passed all the necessary follow-up tests, including the IMPACT test administered to players with concussion-like injuries, and played one of his most efficient games of the season in a 35-24 playoff victory against the San Diego Chargers, passing for 181 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions.

He thinks about all that when he thinks about Shazier.

“Anytime someone gets carted off, you instantly go back in your mind of when I got carted off,” Roethlisberger said. “You think of your family. That’s as much what I was thinking when I was thinking about Ryan, knowing what his family was going through, his loved ones, especially being an away game. Being on the road, you can’t imagine what his family is going through.”

The Steelers and Ravens each know the feeling.

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