Thankful to be alive, Brian Vickers is ready to make his NASCAR return.
It wasn't until the Michael Waltrip Racing Christmas party when Clint Bowyer was struck by the gravity of teammate Brian Vickers' health situation. Still recovering from heart surgery, Vickers looked bad. How bad? Enough Bowyer's concern immediately shifted from who was going to fill-in for Vickers during his absence, to whether the 31-year-old was going to live.
"When he came to the Christmas party, I was really concerned for his life," Bowyer said Tuesday at NASCAR's Media Tour. "This guy really did look like he wasn't going to make it. I'm not kidding."
Vickers is not only going to live, he's going to return competition March 8 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, just months removed from surgery he didn't know he needed until he was laying on an operating table and nurses were shaving his chest. This marks the third time since 2010 Vickers has dealt with a serious scare, which includes blood clots in his left leg and lungs and another blood clot in his right calf three years later.
"They were shaving my chest while they were telling me we were going to go fix it," Vickers said. "It wasn't like, ‘Hey, do you want to do this?' If they didn't, it was bad.
"There was a lot of uncertainty going into the surgery. Unfortunately, I have had to hear that you'll never go racing again too many times in my life. But I've been able to get past that."
Considering his medical history it's no surprise Vickers knew something was amiss as he was driving to a sponsor photo shoot. He immediately drove himself to a hospital for further examination. That was when doctors discovered Vickers' body was rejecting an artificial patch he had inserted to repair a hole in his heart in 2010.
"It was a pretty traumatic event obviously, going through that," Vickers said. "It was definitely the worst of all the medical issues I've had to face."
With the hole in his chest still not healed, MWR co-owner Michael Waltrip (Daytona) and Bret Mottiff (Atlanta) will drive the No. 55 car until Vickers returns. NASCAR has granted Vickers a medical exemption, meaning he is eligible for the Chase for the Sprint Cup provided he wins a race and finishes better than 30th in points.
That comeback will occur a lot sooner than he expected. When Vickers was given the all-clear by doctors, he initially thought they were joking.
"It took all of us by surprise when I went back for my last checkup and everything looked great and ahead of schedule, and (the doctors" said, ‘You'll be clear for Vegas,'" Vickers said. "I said, ‘Are you sure? Shouldn't we make this for (later in the year)?"
Said Bowyer: "To see him now, it is at least a 300 percent improvement from the guy I saw a month ago. It was unbelievable. All of us (at MWR), said there's no possible way he's going to make it back to a car, and his determination has proved, time and time again, all of us wrong."
Vickers has resumed exercising and can do any physical activity not involving his chest. He also again can climb stairs, which he wasn't supposed to in the weeks following the Dec. 13 surgery, though Waltrip forced him when Vickers paid a surprise visit to MWR for the Christmas party.
"It took me 15 minutes to catch my breath," Vickers said. "And when we were leaving (Waltrip) said, ‘You wanna take the elevator?'. I'm like, ‘We could have done that on the way up!'"
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