04/25/24
July 31, 2004
Giambi health mystery solved : (or so we hope). Not a parasite, not an infection, it's supposedly a benign tumor.
No comments from the team about whether he did have a parasite at one time or not; I guess it's a lesson that when you find a problem, you haven't necessarily found the problem. Here's hoping he gets better soon.
posted by lil_brown_bat to baseball at 08:49 AM - 8 comments
That being said, I'm glad it's benign. It's scary how much worse that could have turned out.
posted by jerseygirl at 09:25 AM on July 31, 2004
It sure didn't seem that benign. Its ruined him this year. How can you diagnose a parasite and then a tumor? Aren't these readically different things? Makes very little sense from where I'm sitting.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 10:33 AM on July 31, 2004
There was one thing that confused me: they say it's a tumor, but that it may not need surgery. Outside of chemotherapy, what else but surgery can get rid of a tumor?
posted by dusted at 06:58 PM on July 31, 2004
there are some minimally invasive procedures, such as RFA and i believe endoscopic methods as well, that's used to get rid of tumors.
posted by goddam at 08:14 PM on July 31, 2004
Thanks goddam.
posted by dusted at 09:46 PM on July 31, 2004
As I said in my initial post, when you've found a problem, you don't know that you've found the problem. I've never heard of parasites of any kind causing tumors, but that doesn't mean that the guy didn't have two (or more) unrelated conditions: coincidence, not correlation. So they find a parasite, and they think, "Aha! That explains it!", and they stop looking further -- hence the long time until things get sorted out (if, indeed, they've finally found everything).
posted by lil_brown_bat at 06:04 AM on August 01, 2004
Actually, many parasites and viruses in effect cause cancerous effects when they insert their DNA into host cells and can greatly influence the new creation of tumors.
posted by jmd82 at 12:07 PM on August 01, 2004
Giambi was diagnosed with a parasite on June 29. On Friday, the team would not address whether that initial diagnosis was correct. They haven't said it's not a parasite, LBB. So, going by this diagnosis... Brown and Giambi's wife have benign tumors also? What a clusterfuck diagnosis.