Boo Williams, who played tight end for the New Orleans Saints from 2001 to 2005, is seeking half a million dollars from the NFL for unreimbursed health care since his retirement.

The now 44-year-old former football player wakes up every morning and doesn’t know how the pain will affect him. It can come from a terrible headache that leaves him bedridden, a pain he sometimes feels in his neck.

He needs surgeries, medication and medical consultations but finds it difficult to afford the associated costs.

The NFL recently awarded him $5,000 a month from its disability fund, but Williams insists that same fund and the league mismanaged his claims, which have totaled more than $500,000 over the past 14 years.

I need this help. Some days I feel like I want to end ithe told the Associated Press.

Sometimes I have problems sleeping. It becomes even more difficult when you have to fight to get what you are entitled to. You become very frustrated.

Dozens of former players are in the same situation as him. They spend their days dealing with lawyers, paperwork and bureaucracy in the fight against the NFL and the Neurocognitive Disability Fund.

For 30 years, the league has invested millions of dollars in this fund, which is intended for retired players suffering the effects of injuries sustained during their careers.

The fund, authorized and enshrined in the collective bargaining agreement between the players and the league, will pay out more than $330 million for 2023 alone, more than six times the amount paid in the last 12 years, according to district spokesman Brian McCarthy.

But plaintiffs’ lawyers point to a large number of rejected lawsuits while denouncing a system in which doctors who examine players are paid by the NFL, proving that retired players are at a disadvantage.