J-Bay’s side of the story

A lot of people, myself included, thought that Jason Bay signed with the Mets simply because of the money.  Well, we now know the full story; if you haven’t read it yet, you can read it HERE.

I’m on Bay’s side on this.  Going under the knife is a serious thing, and things can always go wrong, no matter how good the surgeon is.  Therefore, it’s not something you do unless it is absolutely necessary.  He hadn’t been hurt or on the DL, at least two other doctors said that the knee in question was fine, surgery was NOT needed.

So the Sox did drop the surgery requirement, but threw so many other medical contingencies into the deal, including making him pay for most of his insurance, that it just wasn’t worth it.  The Mets were more than happy to take him as-is…all I can say is that I’m glad it wasn’t the Y*****s!

The insurance thing was ridiculous.  I don’t know about other employers, but Mike’s employer does not make him pay more for our health insurance, even though he has diabetes and a heart condition, the latter of which required the placement of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator.  All of the various stuff he’s had done cost a lot; it probably costs a LOT more to keep Mike healthy than it does for Jason Bay.  But he still gets the same amount taken out of his pay for insurance as any other employee who’s just covering themselves and their spouse, the company picks up the rest.  And yes, the company knows about all of this; he had to apply for short-term disability due to being in the hospital, so they had to know that he’d be using the insurance big-time.  It’s not the same as looking for the best auto insurance quote, that’s for sure.

Mike was also being seriously pressured into having surgery that was unnecessary.  Okay, so having it was not a requirement to keep his job, his job had nothing to do with it.  It all started when he had to have an emergency appendectomy.  They found some cancer in the removed appendix, so they did further tests to see if there was any more in there.  There wasn’t, they had gotten it all out when they removed the appendix.

But they wouldn’t let up about colon-loppage surgery!  His doctors were sending him for *second opinions* by other doctors…of THEIR choice, not his.  These second opinions involved no further examinations, they were nothing more than sales pitches.  He refused the surgery, as was his right to do, but they wouldn’t stop nagging him about it.  We finally had to change our home phone number, because the phone calls were bordering on harassment.  They were even calling MY cell phone.  I didn’t change that number, but I told them that since I’m not the patient, calling me to harass me into getting my husband to get surgery he didn’t want is wrong.  I said I’d take legal action if those calls didn’t stop, and finally, they did.

This was a few years ago.  Then, in March 2009, Mike found himself back in the hospital for an issue related to his diabetes.  The sales pitches for the colon surgery started up again.  Once again, he refused.  They fixed the diabetes thing, he went home, but then issues with the heart thing came up…I still think they screwed up his heart meds in the hospital…and he was back in the hospital again.  We knew it was the heart thing based on the symptoms…fluid in the lungs and swelling of feet and legs is something we’ve seen before, and was caused by congestive heart failure.  Yet the hospital was not interested in treating that, rather than doing all sorts of cardiac-related tests, they did CAT scans of the abdominal area, looking for cancer that still wasn’t there.  The sales pitches started again.

To make a long story a little shorter, he was in and out of hospitals FOUR times from March to June 2009.  They decided that if he wasn’t up for colon-loppage surgery, there was nothing more they could do for him.  But they gave me a lot of crap when I demanded that they release him so that I could take him to another hospital.  Yes, I KNEW he was still very sick, but what exactly the HELL are YOU doing to make him better?

I won the war, and took him to Lahey Clinic.  Unlike Melrose-Wakefield, they immediately treated the heart issue at hand.  They saw absolutely no need for colon-loppage.  The only surgery they wanted to do was putting that defibrillator thing in him.  No pushy sales pitches, the doctor just explained everything to us in a clear manner, and then told us to discuss it among ourselves and let him know when we made a decision.

We decided that in this case, it was probably necessary; his thing would keep him alive should something go seriously wrong with the ticker.  So it was done.

So, I do have empathy for Jason Bay here, who wants to go under the knife unless it is absolutely necessary?  Often, in sports, it is, and no doubt Bay would agree to it in such a situation, just like Mike agreed to the defibrillator surgery.  But I don’t blame him for not wanting what several doctors said was not needed.

Oh, and several years after the appendix thing, Mike still doesn’t have any cancer.  He gets checked for that and other stuff regularly by his new doctors at Lahey, and so far, so good!