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[/media-credit]”I feel foolish…you know…I feel kind of foolish sitting at home feeling okay, and not being in the car. It feels really un-natural.”
Those were the words that Dale Earnhardt Jr. said before the media about sitting out the past two weeks due to a concussion. However, he is glad that he did take the time off.
“I hate the attention that it got, and hate kind of being in front of you guys talking about it,” he said. “But, I’m glad it did what I did. I’m glad I took the time off and made the choices that I made. They were hard to make, but I had to do it. I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice. I knew something wasn’t right. You can’t ignore concussions. It’s really dangerous doing that. You read about it in the papers, and I was going through it. I was living it. So, I had to make a choice, and I feel like I made the right one.”
This weekend’s race at Martinsville Speedway marks Earnhardt Jr.’s first race on track since being medically cleared to return to racing following back-to-back concussions.
A couple weeks ago on Thursday before the race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, it was announced that Earnhardt Jr. would miss at least Charlotte and Kansas due to having suffered a concussion in August well testing at Kansas, and then a second concussion at Talladega.
Following a closed test session at Gresham Motorsports Park on Monday and an appointment with Dr. Jerry Perry on Tuesday, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been cleared to run Martinsville Speedway this weekend.
“Dale Jr. has done everything asked of him,” Petty said on Tuesday. “He hasn’t had a headache since Oct. 12, and we have not been able to provoke any symptoms since that time. I have informed NASCAR and Hendrick Motorsports that he is medically cleared for all NASCAR-related activity.”
The press conference on Friday marked Earnhardt Jr.’s first time to address the media about the two weeks that he missed. Earnhardt Jr. said that the process brought forth a lot of time off, exercising and doing what the doctors told him, feeling better each day.
“You just have got to be patient and let thing happen,” he said. “I’ve learned a ton, just about what I’ve went through. Feel like I’m a lot smarter. A lot more prepared, and understand the situation a lot better now than I did beforehand. So, that’s really good. It’s been a good experience. It’s something I’d rather not have went through; I learned a lot from it. It’s been good for me. I’m just excited to be back to work. Get back in the car, and get back to normal. Get back to the life that I’m used to.”
The process meant spending some time keeping things quiet, especially in the first 48 hours.
“The first 48 hours they told me not to do anything so I just kind of didn’t do anything,” he said. “I slept a lot. No TV, just basically just standing walking around the house doing nothing. It was really weird. So I went back to the doctor and I told him that I couldn’t do that anymore that I need to watch TV or play video games or something. I needed some kind of entertainment.”
The process also meant staying in constant contact with doctors, including Michael Collins, who is the director of the Sports Medicine Concussion Program at the University of Pittsburgh.
“I was on the phone with Micky (Dr. Michael Collins) twice a day, just talking about everything that I was doing and everything I was feeling, because I just wanted to do it right,” he said. “I didn’t want to take any chances, and I wanted to get back in the car as soon as I could. But, I wanted to make sure it was not too quick.”
Earnhardt Jr. says the trip to Pittsburgh and meeting Dr. Collins is what made the difference as he says before that, he was “mentally a mess”.
“When I went up there to Pittsburgh I was just really frustrated, when I say I was a mess, I was just really frustrated and having a lot of anxiety about, man how long is this last, is this ever going to be right again,” he said. “I had no answers, didn’t know anything. These guys up there are the professionals and I just asked them everything I wanted to know. Then we went through all these drills and exercises, they ran me ragged. It was a fun day. By the end of the day I felt like I understood what I was dealing with, understood what the process was and I felt a whole lot better.”
What he learned in Pittsburgh was that the second concussion suffered at Talladega was different than your typical concussion – it was a vestibular. As Earnhardt Jr. explained based on what the doctors told him on Friday, “It’s more in the back or the base of the brain where the brain and your spine sort of connect. It sort of mixed up a lot of anxiety and emotional stuff so they symptoms were more like anxiety driven. If I would get into sort of a busy situation I would just get a lot of anxiety.” Your typical concussion, meanwhile, just brings forth headaches and a fogginess.
Going through it, Earnhardt Jr. admits that it was frustrating at times as he just wanted it to clear up. He says it was also frustrating missing Kansas, after knowing how strong the car was going to be there as a result of the test, despite the tire problem that they had. Though he is proud of how Regan Smith did in the two races that he ran.
“Regan (Smith) did a really good job for the team,” he said. “I told him that I was worried about the momentum we’d built as a team, and he maintained that. I feel like we didn’t miss a beat and I can get back in the car as if nothing has really been changed. That couldn’t have went better.”
The single thing for Earnhardt Jr. that he missed most about not being in the car was working with his team as they have grown a good relationship
“I really enjoy working with them and being at the track,” he said. “Just going through practice, making a change, it working and everybody getting excited about that just that small improvement that we made. It’s hard to put your finger on one detail, but when you are sitting there watching the race go on I miss hearing Steve (Letarte) and T.J. (Majors) voices and just being in the car and going through the process. Being out there and competing watching all my peers compete and just wishing I was in the mix being out there doing it. Just being around the guys, every one of my guys we’ve gotten a great relationship built over the last couple of years. It’s fun to race with them, it’s fun to go to work with them.”
There had been talk that possibly Earnhardt Jr. would miss more races, and some suggested that he take the rest of the year off to give himself that time to heal. In response to that, Earnhardt Jr. says he left the options open, allowing the doctors to make the decisions.
“If I could race, I wanted to be at the race track,” he said. “It’s what I love to do. If the doctors felt that I was healthy enough to do that, I wanted to be doing it. I’ve really kind of left all that up to them throughout the whole process. And, I’ve been honest and upfront about how I felt every day and when we go through exercises – how those are affecting me. I’ve been pretty honest, and so far they’ve been real pleased with what they’ve seen, and feel like I can get back in the car.”
He added that he probably could have ran both Kansas and Charlotte, though it was about not taking the chance in case another wreck happened.
Going forward, Earnhardt Jr. says it will change the way he feels about future concussion situations as he will be more responsible.
“I can understand people’s opinions that they would try to push through it, or they would ignore it to stay in the car because I did the same thing in the past,” he said. “Some concussions are kind of light, and the symptoms are real light. If you don’t have another incident, you feel like you can get through it. Some concussions are really bad, and I don’t care how tough you think you are, and your mind is not working the way it is supposed to, it scares the shit out of you. You are not going to think about race cars. You aren’t going to think about trophies. You are not going to think about your job. You’re going to be thinking about what do I got to do to get my brain working the way it was before. That’s going to jump right to the top of the priority list, I promise you.”
