Now they had my attention. They introduced themselves as the Rodrigue family from Maine. The brothers were Dylan and Cody. Cody explained to me that he’d suffered a concussion playing hockey that had gone undiagnosed. He had a miserable time, seeing half a dozen doctors, and none of them had helped him feel better. Then he read a story in ESPN The Magazine about my comeback that mentioned my visits with Dr. Micky Collins. The Rodrigue family contacted UPMC and scheduled an appointment. After several visits and treatments just like mine, Micky had cleared Cody just a few weeks before Daytona. He told me he had a new job as an HVAC tech and was about to go back to work. As Cody and Dylan talked, their dad, Steve, a big fan of my dad, listened with tears in his eyes.
“I just wanted to thank you, man,” Cody said. “You saved me.”
When we first started kicking around the idea of this book, people would ask stuff like, “Well, why do you want to write about this? Why do you want to share all the details of how bad you felt? Why do you want people to know you were out there racing a lot of times when maybe you shouldn’t have been? Why do you want to try and explain what concussions are?”
The answer to all of those questions is the same. I want to help. I want to help people who find themselves in the condition that I was in and the fight that I am still in to this very day.
To be clear, I didn’t save Cody. Micky did. Cody just needed someone to show him the road to a doctor where he could get help. I have sent a lot of people up that road to Pittsburgh. A lot of them are like Cody, who read my story or heard me mention Micky on TV or saw Micky and Dr. Petty during the press conferences when they sat onstage with me and answered questions. But a lot of them also called Micky directly because they would tell me their story and I would just hand over his number. Poor Micky, he had no idea when he gave me his phone number in 2012 how many people I was going to share it with. That includes several racecar drivers, but it’s mostly been people like my new friend from Daytona—everyone from blue-collar workers injured on the job to youth soccer players to people who simply had a bad accident at home. That’s who I’m trying to reach through this book.
Concussions make the news whenever they are attached to football players or racecar drivers. But of the twenty thousand patients that Micky and his staff see every year, pro athletes might make the headlines but they make up only a tiny percentage of the people who receive treatment. The Center for Disease Control estimates that more than five million Americans are living with some form of traumatic brain injury. Many have no idea. They suffer silently like I did, not understanding what’s wrong and either too embarrassed to share their symptoms or too proud. They try to be brave and walk it off, to put a washcloth on it.
You think about how much differently we view injuries in the NASCAR garage now versus even just a few years ago. The way that doctors look at concussions, that’s also changing all the time. Micky had said that the science is moving so fast that the techniques and ideas his office used for me in 2012 had evolved dramatically by the time I returned four years later. He says that if I had to come back for treatment now, the knowledge they’d be working with would be vastly improved again, even in that short span of time. And this is coming from one of the planet’s leading specialists, a guy who is always on the front edge of brain science.
This applies to how concussions are handled at the racetrack too. It wasn’t so long ago that NASCAR didn’t really have any concussion protocol to speak of. Now, in no small part because of me, they do and it keeps improving too. In fact, just as we were writing this book, NASCAR and IndyCar both announced that they were adding new eye tests to post-crash driver checkups in the infield care center, aimed at making a better-informed first diagnosis. I was happy to see that they were being proactive, making a change to improve their processes instead of just reacting to something bad that happened. I think what their protocol is now won’t even be recognizable in five or ten years from now, as we continue to learn and understand. I hope that the same is true for every auto racing series, especially at the lower levels, where the future stars of the sport are just getting started. They need to be educated on what they can do to better protect themselves, before and after head injuries.
If anyone at NASCAR ever wants my input or advice, I want them to know that they can call me anytime. That goes for the drivers too. When my old rival Kyle Busch was told of the new eye test he welcomed it and said, “A lot of times, NASCAR has to save us from ourselves.” He’s right. In the end, the real responsibility will always be on the individual to recognize that they are injured, to know that they need help. Even as the science changes, most concussions are self-diagnosed.
That’s why, if you think you have suffered a head injury, if you read my descriptions of what I felt and thought, Man, that’s just like me, but your doctor is telling you otherwise, go get a second opinion. If your doctor was right, then great. No harm done. But if they are wrong, then you are losing precious time that could have been used to treat what’s really making you sick. And even if you had a doctor clear you, that doesn’t mean you are totally in the clear.
In April 2018 I took a trip to Martinsville Speedway with my new NBC Sports coworkers, Rick Allen and my old buddy Steve Letarte, just to walk around the garage and catch up with everyone in the sport. During that visit I got a quick reminder that as good as I feel now, there is still work to do.
I hadn’t been there just to watch the cars go around since I was a kid. As an adult I was always in one of those cars. So I walked down into one of the turns to watch those cars hammer by during practice. I followed them one after the other with my eyes. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. Suddenly, my symptoms came raging back. I lost my balance and had to grab ahold of something to catch myself. Now my anxiety started ramping up. Could anyone see me? Was someone watching and thinking, Dang, Junior still isn’t right in the head? I hid in between the tires that Goodyear stacks up for race weekends and totally freaked out. My mind was in overdrive. I can’t be relapsing, right? I’m married now! I have a daughter on the way! What if I can’t be there for Amy and our baby because my brain had decided to quit?
Eventually, I gathered myself up and climbed high atop the No. 88 hauler, hoping for some fresh air and a less intense atmosphere. I reached out to Micky. He, as always, talked me down. He told me that, while Martinsville was certainly not a new place to me, this was the first time I had been exposed to this specific environment since I was a kid. My brain needed to be reminded of what that environment felt like and how to process it, the noise and the imagery and the constant movement. It was just another exposure exercise. He said what I should have done was dig in and force my brain and eyes to focus up.
It was a reminder that, while I might be healed, I’m not entirely fixed. I don’t know that I ever will be completely. That’s why, sometimes, I still need help. And that’s why, if you don’t feel quite right, you need help too. After you get that help, learn from it. Do what the doctors tell you to do.
Several weeks later I was back at the racetrack, rehearsing with my NBC Sports crew during the 600-miler at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Our makeshift broadcast booth was in a suite high above the track, and we were standing, with no handrails. It set me off. I felt like if I stood, I would fall down through the glass. Then I remembered what Micky told me after Martinsville. I would take a break and sit down, then stand up and return again. I did that over and over, and each time my feelings lessened. By the halfway point of the race, they had disappeared again. Pretty tricky stuff, how the brain can adjust like that. I’d reminded it and retrained it, on the spot, just as Micky had challenged me to do.
On May 1, 2018, right in between my spells at Martinsville and Charlotte, Amy gave birth to our daughter, Isla Rose Earnhardt. I think about brain science, head injury treatment, and the way we react to the word concussion, how much all of that has changed during my lifetime and especially how much it has changed in the last few years. What will it be like when my daughter is my age? How much wil
l it have evolved by then? It’s good to know that there are some really smart people like my friends in Pittsburgh who are out there chasing the truth about what happens inside our heads.
So if you don’t feel right, go see a doctor. See multiple doctors. Take an ImPACT test. Read whatever you can. Do something, anything, as long as you don’t just sit there and suffer. You don’t have to. Take it from me, because I tried that approach. I will always wish I had acted sooner. Who knows? If I had, I might still be driving racecars instead of talking about them.
Remember back at the start of this book, when I told you how I got my nickname, Hammerhead? It was for being stubborn. Don’t be a Hammerhead. Instead, do this Hammerhead a favor and get help. Or if you think a loved one is suffering, then help them get help.
People like Micky and his staff, they are out there, eager to do for you what they did for me. To give you your life back.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FROM DALE EARNHARDT JR.
There are many people to thank, both in helping me battle through the fog of concussion but also helping me tell about it. A good place to start is my family and friends. You don’t go through the peaks and valleys of concussion—not to mention the process of deciding to change careers—without a deluge of support from those close to you. My wife, Amy; my sister, Kelley; my brother-in-law, L.W. Miller; and my brand director, Mike Davis, are just a few.
This book doesn’t begin well without an incredible boss and race team. Not a day goes by where I don’t feel immense gratitude for having Rick Hendrick in my life. And what a privilege it was to compete with Steve Letarte, Greg Ives, and everyone on the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports team.
This book doesn’t end well without Dr. Jerry Petty of Carolina NeuroSurgery & Spine and Dr. Micky Collins of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion program. Those two men—and their remarkable staffs—were put on this earth to help people.
This book isn’t told well without Ryan McGee. He is a professional in every sense of the word and an extraordinary talent. To do this correctly required us to spend a lot of time together; not a second of it felt like work.
This book doesn’t exist well with the fantastic W Publishing Group at HarperCollins Christian Publishing and also my literary agent, Mel Berger, at William Morris Endeavors. Thanks for taking a chance on me.
Finally, this book isn’t important without people who have dealt (or are dealing) with concussions. Or setbacks. Or difficult decisions. Or heartache. Or conflictions. Life’s hurdles come in a variety of forms, none of which are easy. You can prevail. Perhaps the words in these pages can help you. If so, it’s why I wrote them.
FROM RYAN MCGEE
I would like to thank the staffs at JR Motorsports, Hendrick Motorsports, and UPMC for their willingness to answer countless questions at all times of day and night, specifically Mike Davis, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, Tony Mayhoff, Jesse Essex, and Dr. Micky Collins, who fielded the brunt of the requests.
Additional thanks to Steve Letarte, Brad Keselowski, Rick Hendrick, JR Rhodes, Doug Duchardt, Greg Ives, and the entire No. 88 crew for conversations that provided background, details, perspective, and insight along the way. Thank you to my longtime friends and colleagues in the NASCAR media center and TV compound, who did an amazing job documenting Dale’s story as it happened.
Much appreciation to my wife, Erica; my daughter, Tara; and my ESPN coworkers, all of whom showed great patience as I shoehorned this project into my already busy life.
Also, thank you to Debbie Wickwire and her coworkers at W Publishing, Thomas Nelson, and HarperCollins for their guidance and, dare I say, friendship! And to Jane Dystel and her team at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. I hope this is merely our first chapter.
But the greatest thanks are reserved for Dale and Amy Earnhardt, for entrusting me with helping them tell the story of the most frightening time of their lives . . . and for letting me see baby Isla in person before most of the world!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DALE EARNHARDT JR. is an American professional stock car racing driver, champion team owner, businessman, and television analyst for NBC Sports Group. He began his racing career at seventeen years of age with his dad, Dale Earnhardt Sr. He won consecutive NASCAR Busch Series Championships in 1998 and 1999 and the Daytona 500 in 2004 and 2014. Dale lives in Mooresville, North Carolina, with his wife, Amy, and their daughter, Isla Rose.
RYAN MCGEE, an ESPN senior writer, is a five-time National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and four-time Sports Emmy winner. In 2007 he wrote the script for the documentary Dale, about Earnhardt’s father, narrated by Paul Newman. He lives in Charlotte with his wife, Erica, and their daughter, Tara.
1 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, “How Knowledgeable Are Americans About Concussions? Assessing and Recalibrating the Public’s Knowledge,” September 2015, http://rethinkconcussions.upmc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/harris-poll-report.pdf.
PHOTOS
Family photo
Grandson to Ironheart, son to Ironhead. They call me Hammerhead.
Family photo
Dale Earnhardt and his trusty deputy, taking care of business.
Family photo
Me as an undersized eighth grader at Oak Ridge Military Academy.
Family photo
Getting ready to race my late model in 1993 at age eighteen.
Don Hunter/Smyle Media
My granddaddy, Ralph Earnhardt, lived by this motto: “Go or blow.”
Don Hunter/Smyle Media
No tougher person to pass, none more intimidating to see in your mirror. That was Dale Earnhardt.
Family photo
Third-generation racers: me; my brother, Kerry; and my sister, Kelley, in 1994.
Tami Pope/Harold Hinson Photography
Dr. Jerry Petty, shown here in 2012 after my crash at Talladega sidelined me for two races.
Harold Hinson/Harold Hinson Photography
The boss of JR Motorsports . . . and her brother. Kelley Earnhardt Miller is always on my side.
Harold Hinson/Harold Hinson Photography
Rick Hendrick and I share a laugh on April 25, 2017, the day I announced my decision to retire.
John Harrelson/Nigel Kinrade Photography
The highs of 2014 were incredible. Here, Amy and I celebrate my second Daytona 500 victory.
Christa L. Thomas/Harold Hinson Photography
The No. 88 team surrounds my car in jubilation after winning at historic Martinsville Speedway.
John Harrelson/Nigel Kinrade Photography
Celebrating one of two victories at Pocono Raceway in 2014.
Nigel Kinrade/Nigel Kinrade Photography
Steve Letarte and me at Texas Motor Speedway, where I began feeling a return of concussion symptoms.
Tom Copeland/Harold Hinson Photography
Not only did my 2016 not end well, but it didn’t start well. This wreck led to an early exit in the Daytona 500.
Harold Hinson/Harold Hinson Photography
A flattened car at Kansas, this one just two years after a concussion-inducing test crash there.
Matthew T. Thacker/Nigel Kinrade Photography
The all-too- familiar fog of concussion returned in 2014 after this fiery crash at Texas on lap 12.
Andrew Coppley/Harold Hinson Photography
The hit on June 12, 2016, at Michigan wasn’t huge, but it sidelined me the second half of the season.
Nigel Kinrade/Nigel Kinrade Photography
Little did Greg Ives and I know at the time, but this race at Kentucky would be my last of 2016.
Logan Whitton/Nigel Kinrade Photography
Jeff Gordon came out of retirement to drive my car in select races in 2016.
Nigel Kinrade/Nigel Kinrade Photography
Dr. Micky Collins at Darlington Raceway explaining the decision to hold me out the remainder of the season.
Adam Jordan
My team and I pose for a team ph
oto at Darlington Raceway after I was cleared to race at a December test session.
John Harrelson/Nigel Kinrade Photography
My final Cup race on November 17, 2017, at Homestead-Miami Speedway. It provided me moments with fans . . .
Harold Hinson/Harold Hinson Photography
With my boss, mentor, and friend, Rick Hendrick . . .
Gary Eller/Harold Hinson Photography
With my colleagues and fellow competitors . . .
David Tulis/Harold Hinson Photography
And with Greg Ives and the 88 team.
Karen Goforth/Irresistible Portraits
The Earnhardts in May 2018.
Racing to the Finish Page 17