Chris Bosh blood clot ailment: Heat center's career-ending health issue explored
Chris Bosh described his basketball career leading to his induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as “an unfinished piece of work.” The word was quite weird, considering he had two NBA championships, 11 All-Star selections in 13 years and an Olympic gold. Bosh thought that he could have done more than what his impressive resume already had.
In 2015, a season after the Miami Heat went to four straight NBA Finals appearances, Bosh was diagnosed with a blood clot in his lungs. Four days into his stay in the hospital, one of the doctors told him he needed to undergo surgery. The superstar center remained for another week until the medical team was sure they had cleaned his lungs out.
In 2018, two years after his spectacular basketball career was cut short, Chris Bosh opened up to Bill Simmons about that time in his life. The former Toronto Raptors star said that the life-threatening blood clot had no reasonable explanation. Doctors were looking for “hereditary markers,” something that he didn’t have.
The 11x All-Star added that the doctors couldn’t give him a follow-up plan. Bosh added that he was treated like they did with “an 80-year-old” patient. He had to go through with a one-size-fits-all medication.
Chris Bosh played only 44 games in 2015 but still made the All-Star game. After his lungs were cleared, he was ready to go full throttle for the next season. He was completely healthy right until near the All-Star break when he had another blood clot in his calf.
Initially, there was relief that it was a distal vein in his calf that had the clot and not the lungs. A week later, an NBA doctor declared that the said issue was career-threatening. Suddenly, the Miami Heat had to play the rest of the season without their best big man.
Chris Bosh’s blood clot may have been initially misdiagnosed
Blood clots form when people get injured but normally dissolve by themselves. In some situations, they form in the veins but stay intact. For an NBA player like Chris Bosh, the kind of pain that initial blood clot brings could have been taken as part of the grind of an 82-game schedule.
Bosh might have had the pain but wasn’t too concerned about it. It wasn’t until the clot traveled to the lungs that things turned serious. Surgery became the only choice to solve the life-threatening problem.
NBA players are reportedly at a high risk of blood clots as they regularly work out, and all the jostling, pushing and bumping can easily do that. Some have speculated that the clot in his distal vein was the result of the usual grind, particularly for somebody who played in the paint.
Chris Bosh also told the media before his retirement that he was following a plan. Some experts were convinced that he was taking blood thinners as part of his program. That advice was going to be crucial as a hard crash could make him bleed uncontrollably.
Bosh told Bill Simmons that it took him two years to come to grips with what happened to his career. However, he didn’t have any regrets that he followed his medical team’s advice to just give up basketball.