Hakeem, The Ultimate Warrior - "It is not life threatening"

I don't know if I respect him any more than I did. Frankly, I might actually place that in the "not that bright" category. I understand that he wants to play, but there is a time and a place for everything. This is neither the time nor the place for him to prove he is a warrior. He has done that. He needs to think about his family now and not worry so much about hoops.

Fokass, Hakeem, fokass.

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"Oh, God. I wish I was a loofa."

 

Maybe, if the doctors hold him out, he'll feel like he didn't complete his mission & will resign next year for the veteran's minimum. Now we're cooking with gas. The warrior will live to fight another day.

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actually, i hope this clears up a little about hakeem's condition. actually i'm presuming he had a DVT (deep vein thrombosis) which is what he had in the past. Basically this is a blood clot in the veins returning blood from his leg. Normally the blood can take alternative paths to get a around a clot (much like a single lane accident on a multilane freeway) - there might be a little swelling (traffic jam) but not too much risk. However the clot tends to grow on it's own (like a pileup taking up all the lanes) and then the blood really backs up and eventually no movement of blood in the leg, which can lead to no replenishing of needed oxygen which can cost a leg. However this is a slow process (days) which can be monitored with a type of ultrasound easily. Therefore the logical question is why not clear the clot out with blood thinners and then just monitor him while he's playing. The problem with this is that the actual danger is not in the leg itself, its that people who have blood clots are known to occasionally have a piece of the blood clot break off and go up to the heart and then out to the lungs where it can get lodged again (this time in an artery) and cause death to a large portion of the lung (which can then cause instant death - this is actually what Lucy died of in ER, if you watch). This is called a pulmonary embolism.

Because of this phenomenon doctors have found it is safest to keep people on blood thinners for an extended period (i'm not sure there is an exact reason for the lenght other than what experience has told them). And of course the main risk to being on blood thinners is that if Hakeem got jabbed hard in the upper left side of his abdomen - where his spleen is (a very blood filled organ) - he could die of internal bleeding.

My only ray of hope for Hakeem is that I know there are types of anticoagulants that decrease clotting but don't increase thinning that much - but it may/or may not be appropriate in his specific case. I'm unsure because there are a lot of specefics which i haven't seen publicly released.


Also, this is actually one of the reasons that people die of unexpectedly on planes - because after sitting hours in a cramped seat the blood flow gets sluggish and a clot forms, and then a pulmonary embolism. In fact most of us sitting at the computer for hours on end are at MUCH higher risk than athletes (except unfortunate athletes like Hakeem who must have a genetic predispostion).

(by the way, yes, i'm an m.d.)




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Damn bronxfan! Thank God you are an MD. Other wise I would have to say that you have no life whatsoever!

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Trust me, for a large part of my training, i did have no life whatsoever...



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