“I had no idea I was leading my little boy to an early death”
This article is from www.1news.co.nz/
Diagnosed with CTE and crippled with anxiety, depression and confusion, former professional rugby player Billy Guyton found the foresight and generosity to donate his brain to science. To the medical profession and future generations, it's a gift. To NZ Rugby, it's surely an alarm bell. Mark Crysell reports.
The clock started ticking as soon as Billy Guyton died.
“The faster we can get the brain the better,” says Professor Maurice Curtis, the deputy director of the Neurological Foundation’s Brain Bank.
Five years earlier Billy Guyton, a professional rugby player, had pledged to donate his brain after too many concussions forced him to retire from the game he loved.
“We aim to have the brain in the brain bank or preserved in some way within 24 hours,” says Curtis. “We want to get the brain set and to study the brain cells in exactly the way that they were when the person died.”
Billy Guyton died of a suspected suicide in his Nelson home in May 2023. He was 33 years old.
“His lowest point would be probably in the last months of his life,” says his dad, John Guyton.
His oldest son was crippled with anxiety, depression, mental confusion and serious memory lapses.
“He had a wall cavity in his wardrobe where he had a hole cut out of the wall. And he’d sit in there, it was about three foot wide,” says John. “He just couldn't handle the light, couldn't handle life. And just used to sit in there until he could try and pull himself together to come out.”
Ten months later, Professor Curtis told John and the rest of the whanau that they’d found Stage 2 Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE, a degenerative brain disease neuroscientists believe is linked to head knocks and contact sports.
It was a diagnosis that shocked Curtis. “To see even low-stage CTE in a young person is significant because we know it's progressive, it will lead to dementia. And so that's impacting on a young person's life, when they are dreaming and aspiring to do the next thing.”
Billy grew up in Waimate, South Canterbury, and you can see why there was no way he was ever not going to play rugby.
“This is Nana Stelle,” says John, standing in front of a large mural of a grey-haired woman pinning sky blue Waimate rugby jerseys to a washing line. “She washed the Waimate rugby jerseys for 35 years. She’s Billy’s great grandmother.”
Guyton blood and bone is part of the soil and green grass of Manchester Park, the local rugby ground.
“We’re on our sixth generation of rugby players, the young ones now,” says John. "So yeah, we’ve been here for a long time.”
He had Billy down at the park as soon as he could, at four years old. “You could barely see his legs, his big, long socks, baggy shorts,” says John. "An incredibly proud day, to me that was my little All Black, he was coming and that was my son.”
John has the long lean body of a man who once sheared 500 ewes in one day. He’s lived a life, but his voice breaks often when he talks of his son. “That day was incredible, but in saying that I had no idea I was leading my little boy to an early death.”
“I had no idea I was leading my little boy to an early death.”