“Oh my God, your brain is hemorrhaging!” said the San Francisco 49ers’ orthopedic surgeon, as he peered into my right eye with his retinoscope. “You son of a bitch, you said it was high blood pressure!” I yelled. Exploding to my feet off the examining table in his small office in our locker room, I lunged at him with malice in my eyes and homicidal thoughts in my as-of-yet-undiagnosed hydrocephalic brain.

It was September 14, 1981, early in my 2nd season. Just twelve days shy of my 23rd birthday, little did I know how those seven words would change the trajectory of my life forever.

During the prior two-and-a-half weeks, I’d been battling a host of disturbing symptoms: pounding headaches, loss of hearing with each heartbeat, puking like a firehose, and balls of light in front of each eye. The night before I saw the doc in the locker room, my right arm had curled uncontrollably across my chest as all my usual symptoms intensified. Each time I struggled to pull my arm out straight with my other hand, it curled back up across my chest till my fist was rammed up under my chin like a Mike Tyson uppercut. I had no feeling in the arm and no control over it. After a couple of agonizing hours, alternating between blowing guts and lying in my bed as my head pounded and balls of light hovered in front of my eyes, I finally passed out. I’d seen our team docs no less than five times over the course of those prior 18 days. Now, after my latest symptom, and despite my athlete’s tendency to downplay pain, his dismissive diagnosis of high blood pressure just wasn’t going to cut it. His flippant demeanor had always pissed me off. But that morning when I walked into his office, my anger had morphed into white-hot, seething rage, which was only intensified when I was greeted with a condescending, “What now?”

Following the doc’s pronouncement that my brain was bleeding, that rage became a violent fury. I wanted to rip his head off and punt it down the hall. And I could have. At six foot five, I was 260 pounds of muscle and well-trained aggression. But I somehow mustered enough self-control to leave his head and body intact, and allowed him to ward me off with his scrawny right hand while he scrambled for the phone with the other. My verbal mad-dog assault continued as he frantically phoned colleagues for advice, his eyes bulging and sweat beading on his forehead. He was scribbling something on his prescription pad when the team’s general practitioner walked in. The GP took a look in my eye and concurred, “Yep, it’s a brain hemorrhage.” To my disgust, he sounded impressed by his colleague’s diagnosis. I halfway expected them to slap hands in a self-congratulatory physicians’ high five.

I later discovered what I’d experienced that night was focal point paralysis. Focal point paralysis is a common expression of intracranial pressure, as are all the other symptoms I had. The paralysis could also be permanent if the pressure is not alleviated immediately. Somehow these two clowns managed to miss what it seems would be obvious to trained physicians . . . or likely even to first-year medical students. The GP, though, was clearly impressed at Dr. Doom having cracked the mystery.

The team’s orthopedic surgeon had earned the title “Dr. Doom” long before I was a 49er, by ending the careers of several players with a single surgery. His kill list would include three of my teammates from that ’81 season alone, including our two-time Len Eschmont Award winner, Paul Hofer. All three would eventually win medical malpractice suits against him.

Perhaps the GP’s seeming amazement at the diagnosis was due to Dr. Doom’s track record of royally screwing things up. Or perhaps he was equally incompetent. Either way, I was now among the players paying the price for the ineptitude of this man who was now, in my estimation, the equivalent of an overgrown toddler with a play stethoscope and doctor’s kit.

“Go home, lie down, then go see Dr. Adornato at Stanford Hospital this afternoon,” he said, stretching his arm out to hand me a note he ripped from his pad. He acted like I was radioactive, staying as far away from me as possible. I followed his instructions, went back to the apartment in Foster City I shared with teammates Terry Tautolo and Scot Stauch, and drove myself to the hospital later that day. At Stanford I was immediately admitted and underwent a CT brain scan. As I was prepped for emergency VP (ventriculoperitoneal) shunt brain surgery a few hours later, the 49ers began preparing their medical fumble defense.

Thus began a journey that bore no resemblance to the life I’d envisioned for myself, the life I’d worked for over a decade, busting my ass to create. It was early in the ’81 Super Bowl season – the beginning of The 49ers Dynasty and Decade of Dominance, and the end of my life as I knew it. While my teammates rolled toward our first Super Bowl win, I was on injured reserve after knee and brain surgeries, naively believing the doctors and trainers when they told me they were looking into having a special helmet designed to protect the VP shunt they installed from my brain to my abdomen, and they’d have me back on the field before long. As a hungry young defensive tackle trying to make a name in the NFL, I was completely devoted to the game and was all in. It only gradually dawned on me, as one thing after another didn’t add up that season, that (a) they never intended to play me again, and (b) they fully intended to cover up the facts in regard to my football-induced traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Doom’s horrified declaration that September day kicked off a nightmarish eight-month chapter of my life and a 38-year legal battle against the 49ers’ workers compensation carrier, The Travelers. At age 23, within an eight-month period, I suffered weeks of amnesia, three arrests, lost my new truck several times, and survived two more emergency brain surgeries 10 hours apart, the second of which inspired my family to call in a priest to give me last rites. Over the next 11 years, I’d survive six additional emergency brain surgeries and multiple grand mal seizures, plus two more surgeries on my left knee in ’84 repairing Doom’s sloppy work. By 2017, I’d been forced to win four Workers’ Compensation hearings, eight Workers’ Comp Appeals and three California Court of Appeals to access prescribed treatments and get my medical bills paid. Yet nearly two lifetimes later, the battle continued and I was still swinging my sword.

I never could have imagined that almost four decades of my life would be spent struggling to survive through seizures and surgeries, fighting dementia and the unyielding pursuit of creditors, and battling in court with the dual corporate monstrosity of the NFL and The Travelers. On October 14, 2019, at age 61, this legal battle culminated in a nine-and-a-half-hour mediation hearing with the aim of settling my Workers’ Comp cases once and for all and removing a nearly ¾ million-dollar lien The Travelers placed on my NFL brain injury lawsuit settlement. (Interestingly, the lien was more than I even qualified for in the settlement.)

This is a brief account of this harrowing 38-year journey. While it’s a disturbing tale that shines a light on the inhumanity of corporate greed, I tell it with a sense of humor and an abiding faith in God and the ultimate goodness of life. As my barely 5-foot-tall mother and hero, Big Rita Visger, always said, “Put it in God’s hands,” and “Something good comes out of everything.”

And Big Rita didn’t lie.

Turning Tragedy into Triumph

George Visger attended the University of Colorado on a football scholarship, majored in Fisheries Biology, and played in the 1977 Orange Bowl. He was a 3-year starter at defensive tackle, selected in the 6^th round in the 1980 draft, and played with the 49ers for two years. During the 1980 season, George sustained a concussion against the Cowboys, yet played the entire game by clearing his head with smelling salts. Early in the following 1981 Super Bowl season, George developed hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and underwent 3 emergency VP shunt brain surgeries in 8 months and was given last rites at age 23.

After a multi-year Workers’ Compensation legal battle to get his hospital bills paid, he returned to school in 1986 to complete a Biology degree, and survived five emergency brain surgeries during a 10-month period while enrolled in Chemistry, Physics, and Pre-Calculus courses. Despite developing dyslexia and major short-term memory deficits, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Biological Conservation with a minor in Social Science in 1990, and began a career as a wildlife biologist. In 1994 he survived a ninth brain surgery, returning to his wildlife work two weeks later. He taught high school biology, algebra, and chemistry for three years before returning to work as a biologist in 1999. He founded Visger and Associates Inc., Environmental Consulting in 2003, and The Visger Group, Traumatic Brain Injury Consulting (www.thevisgergroup.org) in 2010.

George has been featured on CNN, NPR, ESPN’s Outside The Lines, and media through out the U.S., England, Germany, and Brazil. He consulted directly with Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, co-chair of the NFL Head, Neck, and Spine Medical Committee on rule changes to reduce TBI in football. Many of George’s suggestions have been implemented to date, and The Sport Digest published his recommendations as The Visger Rules 12/10/10. Mr. Visger conducts motivational seminars, co-authored an eBook memoir in 2012 with Irv Muchnick, “Out of My Head; My Life In and Out of Football,” and has published in:

• Slate Magazine 2015 A Dangerous Game
• US News and World Report 2013 Should Football Be Fundamentally Changed 
• The Sport Digest 2010 The Visger Rules – Recommended Changes to NFL Rules

Mr. Visger has also been the recipient of several awards over the years, including:

• 2014 Moving Mountains, TBI Survivor Advocate of the Year
• 2012 CA State Senate Award, TBI Advocacy
• 2012 Brain Injury Association of CA, TBI Survivor Volunteer of the Year Award
• 2001 Stockton Athletic Hall of Fame, Individual Induction
• 1998 Stockton Athletic Hall of Fame, 1975 A.A. Stagg High Team Induction

He was featured in the Family Connect Care 2020 podcast Unlocking the Doors of Dementia.

In 2019 George settled a 38-year legal battle for Workers’ Comp benefits to get his medical bills paid. His biography, Facing Giants: My 38 Year Battle, will be published in March of 2025 during Brain Injury Awareness Month, and George will be featured in Susan Sember’s Silverlight Productions film, Beyond The Game, in 2025.