OT:LeBron's Surgery....

[MaxwellSmart]

http://basketball.realgm.com/src_wireta ... w_removed/


I know a lot of people here noticed his enlarged jawline....Hopefully, he's completely healthy---but my question is:....Any way this can be related to steroids?...just wondering---Cause the guy looked like he was 29 when he came into the league(body-wise)...Kobe was a skinny kid coming from HS.......sorry, had to ask.

[exculpatory]

From what I can ascertain, LeBron had a hopefully benign tumor of the parotid gland excised. The parotid glands are salivary glands - excrete saliva. They are the glands that get very big during infection with the mumps virus. This has zero to do with the use or abuse of anabolic steroids.

LeBron does have a prominent jaw and does look and has always looked older than his chronological age. However, there is no way on earth that he has acromegaly (a benign pituitary tumor which autonomously hypersecretes growth hormone). Acromegaly is a bad ass disease which, if not treated, can lead, among other things, to diabetes mellitus, hypertension, severe osteoarthritis, cardiomyopathy, a characteristic "facies", very large hands and feet (and "gigantism" if it occurs BEFORE puberty and epiphyseal closure). It is treated with surgical resection, somatostatin analogs and one particular growth hormone receptor antagonist.

Georgie Muresan from Romania (who played a few years for the Wiz in the 1990s) had acromegaly/gigantism, as did Andre the Giant. The Caucasian Brit on the sitcom "The Jeffersons" many years ago also had acromegaly.

[MaxwellSmart]

Thanks for the info...hopefully, he is okay....and that he signs with us in 2010 for the MLE....cause he makes enough dough doing commercials.......