The NFL player awoke Monday morning with his normal headache, along with the typical aches and pains of a Monday after a tough game.  They’d lost, and played badly, and he was in a rotten mood.

His headache was usually relieved by some toradol or some oxy, and smoking some weed would knock it all the way down.  However, none of the normal remedies seemed to be able to do the trick.  He went about his day, high as hell, but with a lingering headache that actually seemed to increase as the day went.

The player finally began to wonder if his headache was something else, besides the usual bumps and bruises of the NFL season.  He was also beginning to feel some itching and burning on his head along with the headache.

As the day wound down, the player’s wife began to question the headache.  She wondered aloud why the headache seemed so different.  Her husband, she noticed, had begun wearing his hair in braids under his helmet.  Could that be the cause of the headaches?

The player decided to undo his braids to determine the issue.  When the first braid came down, they found a spider in it!

This prompted a trip to the emergency room!  If there were spiders in his braids, they could be doing irreparable harm!

They could be laying eggs!

They could be gnawing on his brain!

They could be doing anything in there, and that’s what they wanted the doctor to discover!

Then, after a full moment of diagnosis, the doctor asked the player if he played in the NFL.

Of course, the player replied.  I’ve been in the league for 5 years.

The doctor then explained what brain damage was, and how he’d done the same for this player, 16 weeks a year, for 5 years.  Turns out it was CTE, and since nobody cares about that, the player went home and shut his mouth.