HEAD ATHLETIC TRAINER RICK BURKHOLDER Thanks for being here. We wanted to be up front and give you guys an opportunity to ask some questions based on a non-football illness that we have with one of our players. So, I will walk you through the last couple of days, and I’ll take you back to Thursday night in Oakland at the end of the ball game. Eric Berry came to me through Emmitt Thomas with some chest discomfort and so we evaluated him on the sideline, decided that he was okay to come inside right after the game. Dr. (Cris) Barnthouse, Dr. (Mike) Monaco, our two team physicians on the trip examined him and we came back to Kansas City. On Friday afternoon when we rejoined here for treatment and rehab, he was still having some discomfort in his chest and it just didn’t quite add up as an orthopedic injury so we did an x-ray. That was negative and Dr. Barnthouse with his experience said, ‘you know we need to get an MRI on this’. So, we got an MRI Friday afternoon and Friday evening when we got the results and our physicians and radiology people at The University of Kansas Hospital read the MRI they discovered that he had a mass in his chest. It was on the right side, it is on the right side of his chest and that was Friday. On Saturday we did further testing at The University of Kansas Hospital including CT scans, some blood work and a PET scan. At that point, Coach (Reid), myself and our team of physicians met with Eric (Berry) and at that point in time and at this point in time, we don’t have a definitive diagnosis, but the leading consideration of what he has right now is lymphoma and so the next step in the process is to finish some testing. He’s about 75% done with the testing. His family and our Chiefs family have decided to go to Atlanta to the Emory University Hospital and see Dr. Christopher Flowers who’s a specialist in lymphoma to continue to evaluate Eric. That evaluation will continue tomorrow and through the next couple of days. I know that we’ve talked to the group. Ted (Crews) will try to get you the information as we go forward with this diagnosis and treatment schedule. Right now it’s not fair for us to put any kind of diagnosis on it. Like I said, the leading consideration for this thing is lymphoma, but we don’t have a definitive diagnosis therefore there’s no staging, there’s no, you know any of the other questions that come along with lymphoma. As part of this process, the Atlanta Falcons medical staff assisted us, The University of Kansas Hospital oncology department and radiology department assisted us and we think we have Eric in a real good spot right now to have really good outcome with this mass in his chest. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you this weekend that our medical staff and The University of Kansas Hospital worked tirelessly to get to the point that we’re at today and so I would like to thank Dr. Barnthouse, Dr. Monaco, Dr. (Paul) Schroeppel, Dr. (Josh) Nelson and in particular the radiology department at KU who worked tirelessly to get to this. And Eric’s not here right now because he’s on his way to Atlanta. -Steve
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 00:47:08 +0000
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