Comments on: We Believe in Setbacks

By: Mets Fans Not Getting It Done « Faith and Fear in Flushing

Mets Fans Not Getting It Done « Faith and Fear in Flushing — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 02:27:16 +0000

[...] Jose Reyes returned. This was no mere undisabling. It was a month ago tomorrow that we received the news of the thyroid setback. Jose, it was said, would be restrained from “baseball activity” for two to eight [...]

By: Jackabite

Jackabite — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:41:31 +0000

Who would give an estimate of “two to eight weeks”?? Clearly, this is totally ridiculous, but stay off some of other Mets sites if you want to speculate on what this sure looks like: When I brought this up on other boards, I was all but tar and feathered. As a matter of fact, I need two to eight weeks before I’ll go back there again.

By: CharlieH

CharlieH — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:26:49 +0000

How do you explain the (if you’ll pardon the expression) Yankees (ew! I feel dirty!) then?

By: Andee

Andee — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:28:24 +0000

At least the Mets are doing the right thing this time. It’s likely they’re trying to treat this without drugs or surgery first because antithyroid stuff can be a major, major, major energy suck, one big enough to screw up Jose’s game for good. And if they had let him run around out there and he developed a heart problem from it, they’d never have heard the end of it, and justifiably so.

Also, the time missed is retroactive to last week, so it’s likely that whatever they saw on the labs last week is beginning to resolve with conservative treatment. (Which could explain Jose saying, “My thyroid is fine”; it might well be doing a lot better this week compared to his first set of labs.) So next week we should know a lot more about this. I just hope he doesn’t have thyroid cancer or anything like that. (Remember Jerry DiPoto? He had that once, before he was ever a Met. He’s still among the living, but it took a lot out of him at the time.)

By: Joe D.

Joe D. — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:45:43 +0000

Well, from what I hear the medical community says it is not the level but the risk to the heart if one does any exercising with the level up.

But Francesca had a few doctors call and say the risk to the heart comes from a combination of medications and exercise. Jose has not been prescribed anything other than that rest. And then, another specialist called up and said it would be unlikely that shell fish would raise the level that high and that most treatments do involve some kind of medication – not leaving it alone.

As usual, we’re getting mixed signals from the Met organization. Jose is miffed, the Mets said yesterday he had an over-active thyroid but after speaking with the doctors announced Jose would be back in uniform in a few days. This morning Omar tells Francesca the same thing on a phone call.

I don’t know what’s going on with the Mets and neither does management – so what else is new?

By: Made in the Shea-de

Made in the Shea-de — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:09:22 +0000

I dunno, Greg. If they keep this up I think you’re going to have to change the title of this blog to “Skepticism and Resignation in Flushing.”

By: Greg Prince

Greg Prince — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:02:45 +0000

It takes a thyroid of one to hold us back.

(And yes, to answer your question.)

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:56:58 +0000

Greg, is the post title a reference to those “We Believe in Comebacks” mailers the Mets sent out begging us to buy tickets? My apartment got one too and it made me think of “Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos”. Then again, Chuck is a Met fan, so maybe that’s alright?

By: Greg Prince

Greg Prince — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:59:13 +0000

Thanks for the valuable perspective, and we hope you’re doing well as a matter of course these days.

By: af

af — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:55:19 +0000

As someone who went through the diagnostic process for hyperthyroid a number of years ago, perhaps I can shed some light. First of all, regardless of the cause of the over-active thyroid, until it starts to come under control there’s a very real risk from even moderate exercise. Second, a lot of testing is involved for diagnosis, as thyroid cancer needs to be excluded, and there are several different profiles for hyperthyroid, each with somewhat different treatment options. It’s all very complex, and even though I work in a biomedical research lab, I had trouble understanding the process and the disease. It doesn’t surprise me at all that an athlete, even a gifted athlete, would have trouble understanding what he’s been told. Furthermore, at early stages, overactive thyroid can be asymptomatic; I didn’t think I had any kind of problem until my numbers came back off-the-charts. And then, it turned out that things that I’d noticed that I hadn’t considered problems were in fact symptoms of the thyroid disease. With thyroid-suppressive medication, it took me 4 or 5 months to be back to normal, and that included a stage where I couldn’t walk 10 steps without stopping to rest and eating 1/4 of a chewy bagel took me 45 minutes. Better, more frequent monitoring of blood levels might have, in retrospect, cut a month off the process.