Former Cleveland Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar has Parkinson’s disease and liver failure, he revealed in a new interview with Cleveland Magazine on Tuesday, July 9.
The 60-year-old NFL star was diagnosed with cirrhosis, the third of four stages of liver failure, in March 2023 and Parkinson’s disease in mid-February 2024, he added.
Kosar told the magazine that once the new year arrived, his “body gave out on” him.
“I went into the hospital and got a massive blood transfusion,” he told me. “It was like ‘How are you alive?'” How are you moving? Because your hemoglobin levels are quite low.
Dr. Anthony Post, a hepatologist with University Hospitals, told Cleveland Magazine that “liver disease does tend to fluctuate,” and that Kosar is “on that wave thing where it goes up and down.”
“He’s in a good phase right now, but anything bad could happen,” the doctor warned.
Dr. Michael Roizen, Cleveland Clinic’s emeritus chief wellness officer who is also treating Kosar, said the retired athlete had a 90% likelihood of needing a new liver. Roizen told Cleveland Magazine that transplant surgery is “difficult: difficult to get the transplant, difficult to live with.”
“Remarkably — you know, he takes a lot of supplements, he’s been exercising and has been on a good diet and is taking the medications that we’ve prescribed him and we’ve been following him pretty closely so — he’s really gotten a lot better,” according to the Post.
“I wish you could have seen me three months ago,” he continued. “Actually, maybe not; I looked like death. I felt like dying. E. coli causes blood poisoning. Heart problems. And I believed I needed a liver transplant right now. “I was in bad shape.”
“It’s incredible that you can feel as well as I do despite everything going on. I can tell that my efforts are making a difference. I really believe it will continue. “Time will tell.”
The former athlete stated that he “strongly believe[s] in the power of positive thinking.”
“I think that positive energy can emerge in our brains, and I like living in a zone of positivity. “I want to think about things that will help,” he stated.
“I visualize wonderful health. It’s not so much that I’m trying to convince myself or that I’m in denial, but rather that I’m choosing to be optimistic,” he explained. “Because everyone has something. We all have health concerns to some extent, and we all have bumps along the way.”
Kosar, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, spent the most of his NFL career with the Browns. He also played for the Dallas Cowboys and the Miami Dolphins before retiring in 1996.
