INDY RACING LEAGUE MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 3, 2003

Kenny Brack

Dr. Robert Gregori

Bobby Rahal

KENNY BRACK: I think it's coming along pretty well, Tom. Considering what we went through in Texas, I mean, I'm doing pretty good. I mean, I'm up and moving about every day, doing lots of rehab, you know, regaining my strength basically. So, you know, I'm not complaining at all. It's great to see progress every day.

KENNY BRACK: Obviously, I can't walk yet or anything like that because my ankles can't take any weight. But I wheel around in the wheelchair, I try to get some cardio back, you know, basically build myself back up to when I get to the point where I can start walking again. So I'm trying to do whatever I can to basically get myself in the best shape possible in the shortest amount of time here.

KENNY BRACK: Well, I mean, you know, you get up 7:30, 8:00, then you eat a little bit, get dressed, you get in a wheelchair and go down to the gym. You normally do weight lifting for about an hour in the morning between 9 and 10, come back to the room, then you are pretty tired. Although I'm not lifting the same amount of weight I did before the accident, but I still lift so you get tired. So you rest for, you know, about an hour or so. Have some lunch, then it's time for the next hour of rehabilitation. You go and do that between 1 and 2. That's more occupational therapy, which means things you learn how to transfer from one chair to another, do certain things at home so you sort of feel comfortable with everything until you can start using your legs again. After that, that's also pretty hard. Do you some cardio in there, too. You go back and you rest a little bit. Then at 4:00, it's time for the next session. After that, it's dinner, you know, restroom, showers and stuff, and all of a sudden it's 8:00 and it's time to rest again. So it's pretty busy in this hospital, I've got to say. But that's good because, you know, it's good to keep busy and get more energy every day.

BOBBY RAHAL: Well, naturally, it's great to hear Kenny. We spoke a little earlier today, of course, last week. Although he doesn't really remember it, I was with him just before he went into surgery down in Dallas. I want to thank, again, all the people at Parkland for a great job, and of course Dr. Gregori and everybody in Indianapolis. I know Kenny's spirits and his discipline and what have you very well. I have no doubt that he's going to come back faster than people would expect. It just seems to be the way he is. The team obviously, you know, everybody's behind him. Everybody is obviously concerned. I think we've had numerous members of the team over the past several weeks with Kenny and Anita. I think one of the things we've been very pleased about is the number of well wishes from people all over the world coming into the website or come into the office. I'm sure we've forwarded them all on to Kenny. If he ever thought he had fans, he shouldn't worry about that now because I think it's pretty clear he had a lot of them. You know, we're just anxious for him to get strong, get better. He's going to be a new father here in the next few months. We're excited about that, everybody on the team. You know, there's a lot going on. But obviously we're all behind him a hundred percent. I know he's in good hands there. I know, as I say, he'll be back much faster than what people think.

DR. ROBERT GREGORI: Sure. I'd like to take maybe a minute here to help put all this into perspective. I work with Ortho Indy. I'm one of the non-surgeon physiatrists with the group, working alongside doctors like Dr. Trammell, Kevin Scheid. They'll do the surgical aspects of care, and we do the rehab aspects. Hopefully with the two parts combined have the best optimum outcomes. When Kenny came to us, I knew the history, obviously saw the crash. I really expected just with any one of those injuries to his ankles, his femur, his spine, any one of them could have been life-threatening by themselves. He had the surgical repair of both the ankle injuries and as well the femur. His spine has a two-part process. Normally for a lumbar compression fracture like he suffered where the front part of the spine essentially is compressed, the part that weight bears for us and holds one segment up between the other segments alongside of it, above and below, normally the process involves what's called a posterior stabilization procedure surgically, which is coming through the back, then patients are literally turned over and from the front side the surgery adds further stability by operating on the front. During the course of Kenny's surgery on his spine, which was on the day after the injury, I think on the 13th, as the backside of the spine was being stabilized, he developed what's called a dural tear or a leak of spinal fluid through the dura. The dura is the sac, if you will, the membrane that contains the spinal fluid around the brain and the spinal cord. When there's a tear of that dura, the spinal fluid will leak, and that has to be repaired in order to adequately close up the wound. In the process of the posterior stabilization, which went very well, there was a small issue with the dural tear. To keep that leak under control and help stabilize that required a couple extra hours, I think two hours of extra surgical time. So they couldn't finish the procedure by doing the front or anterior fusion piece. That's a plan for tomorrow. Dr. Trammell is going to take Kenny back for surgery, finish the spine stabilization process. There hasn't been any negative effects of not having them completed together. He's been well-stabilized by an external brace that he wears. But that procedure is to be completed tomorrow to add further stability to the spine and allow him to continue to heal there. Remarkably, with all these injuries, he's had what appears to be no neurologic effects from the spine injury, which an injury like that frequently will cause paraplegia, inability to move or feel the legs. There's been no findings to suggest that there's any spinal cord damage or nerve damage there. With his ankle injuries, as well, we sometimes see nerve injuries occurring with that type of trauma, he's wiggling his toes well and has good sensation, and for all expectation to recover well as these bones continue to heal. He probably had a stretch injury to his left arm that has caused some mild weakness involving the arm, a little bit of nerve stretching. We expect that to recover fully, as well. It's always important to me to see, when I admit somebody to the hospital here, what their attitude's like. With Kenny, he's obviously a champion. Every word out of his mouth is a positive one. He follows that with positive action. He's geared up for winning, and he's going to win with all these injuries that he's had. I don't see him, after he's given adequate time to heal, I foresee him recovering very well and getting back to doing the things he loves in time. But the injuries as they are require time to heal. Bones heal, fortunately. But even when all the technologies that we can apply surgically, he still needs probably another three or four months for the injuries to his ankles to heal adequately for him to begin the process of weight-bearing and walking. And for his spine, another potentially three months to stay in a brace after the spine surgery is completed tomorrow to allow the spine to heal. But, again, I expect to see him recovering very well. After he's allowed to weight bear, he probably will have such good strength in other parts that he's maintained through the process of the exercise he's doing and staying ready, so that when he is allowed to come out of his spinal brace and is allowed to move forward with weight bearing in his lower extremities, he'll be really taking off. It shouldn't be more than a couple, three months after that to get him back doing all that he loves to do. So I think from my perspective, as I said, I anticipated seeing him pretty well bruised up and feeling it. He came to us, although he had some big injuries, I don't want to undermine that aspect of it, he has shown what it takes to really recover well from this kind of multiple trauma.

DR. ROBERT GREGORI: It will be at Methodist. Dr. Trammell will be performing that procedure. Did you have questions about the specific nature of the procedure?

DR. ROBERT GREGORI: He'll be utilizing what's called an anterior approach, meaning he'll go from in front of the spine. They have to go through the abdomen to get to that aspect of the spine, and then fusion with instrumentation or some hardware, metal hardware, and probably some bone fusion, as well. Kenny, did he discuss it with you last night?

KENNY BRACK: Yeah. It's going to be like a bracket put on the inside of the spine, together with a piece of bone that's going to grow onto there. Like he put it to me, you know, if I ever break my back again, it's not going to be at that place, because it's going to be stronger than the original. It's going to be a very strong piece when it's all done.

DR. ROBERT GREGORI: Without that next piece, there's an increased risk of developing some angular deformity at that level, or going on and having some further destruction and potentially nerve injury. With that part tomorrow, that will pretty much eliminate the risk for those other things from developing.

KENNY BRACK: No. Right now, I feel that obviously I haven't taken any decision because I want to work out as hard as I can, I want to heal up as much as I can. If I get to be as fit as I think I need to be to drive a race car, you know, I don't have any thoughts about quitting right now. But, you know, that is a decision that I will take when I get to that stage, obviously together with the team and everything. But that won't be right now. But, no, I still love racing. You know, I'm determined to get back to a hundred percent. That's what all my energy is devoted for right now.

KENNY BRACK: Yeah, I've seen it. Only picture mode right now. I haven't been able to find anybody with a video. But, yeah, I've seen it.

BOBBY RAHAL: No, you know. Obviously, Kenny is our driver. Obviously, he's out for a while. You know, I think Kenny's value to us has always been far more than just him driving. He's been an integral part of our team, in the decisions we make. He's always been very much a part of that whole process. Even though he's laid up in the hospital, I don't see that changing. I have yet to really talk to Kenny about, "Who do you think we should get to do some of the testing, some of the early races?" I think there's time for that. Certainly there's a number of options out there. But I don't think we're in any real rush to do anything at this point in time. I think one of the first things is to -- I've asked Dr. Trammell to give me a good sense of just how long Kenny's recuperation period will be. As I say, I have no doubt, just like every lap he takes, I have no doubt he'll do a lot quicker than what everybody says. But, you know, Kenny and I will sit down and talk about, you know, who we can get for the winter period here, the testing period, and we'll go from there. We'll just see what happens. But first thing's first, and that's for Kenny to get healthy. From our standpoint, having him back in the car, it's easy for us. We'll just let him get healthy and we will work together to figure out who could be a good lieutenant in the meantime for him and we'll go from there.

KENNY BRACK: You know, I feel that, obviously, sitting in the middle of something like that, you got to be -- I don't know, you probably got to have God riding with you in the car or something to help you out. But yeah, I'm sure you can call it luck or whatever. But I certainly feel that I had help from above to still be here because it was, you know, a big hit. But it also shows the safety of the cars, and I think the medical expertise that's out there today, not only the track-side support, which is obviously great, the guys took great care of me. You know, it's very easy when you're lying in the middle of the track for somebody to make a little mistake and you have a broken back, all of a sudden the injury's a lot worse. They really took good care of me. The safety team, I've got to thank from the bottom of my heart. You know, from that point, they took me to the hospital and I had a great team of doctors down there in Dallas that took good care of me. You know, my team, I can't say enough about them either. You know, obviously in situations where drivers get to hospital, nobody's there from the team. The team here, you know, everybody was there. Bobby flew in from Mexico. I've had just a tremendous amount of support from everybody. Obviously, it's invaluable in a situation like that. Obviously, I'm in Indianapolis now, Terry Trammell, Dr. Scheid, all these guys are used to dealing with injuries like that, Gregori, all the doctors here, they take tremendous good care of me. So I feel lucky in that I'm in such a good company. My wife took obviously a lot of work. She worked a lot during this process. I just feel lucky that I have such good persons around me that really supports me in a situation like this. You know, that's half the healing thing. When you have people like that, it's easy for me to stay positive and just do the best I can, too. I feel very lucky to be in the situation I am. Obviously, I have a different kind of cards in my hand now than I had three, four weeks ago. But the main thing is, you got to play the best you can with what you have. Right now my full focus is to get well, and then after that we'll take the next step, you know. But I feel very, very confident that I will get, you know, good. I'm determined to do it fast, too.

KENNY BRACK: Well, I listen to my body, you know. If I feel really tired, worn out, aching, then obviously you got to take it a little easy. If you feel energized and stuff, then I go for it. Yesterday, I was outside, it was a nice day. I ran two laps around the hospital in my wheelchair, you know. I timed them. Just to get some cardiovascular exercise. Today I was up there one hour weight lifting in the morning, and I did pretty good at that. There have been other days when, you know, I haven't felt that great, like when I first came here five, six, seven days ago when, you know, I was just aching, my back was aching, everything was not good. Well, then obviously you can't overdo it. I'm used to working out. One thing when you work out is, yeah, you got to wear yourself out, but you also got to give yourself time to recover, otherwise you just keep wearing yourself out, you never going to get any stronger. It's the same with this thing, you know. So I feel pretty good. But, yeah, maybe sometimes I want to do more than I maybe can. So far it's been very good and it's been a very good experience here in this rehab hospital. I really have gained a lot of energy. I can do a lot of things on my own now.

KENNY BRACK: Yeah, it is painful on the sternum. The thing which is kind of cool, although I have a lot of broken bones, I don't have any cast or plaster on my body. I mean, everything's I guess screwed together or whatever, which obviously increases my mobility. The sternum, it's not really anything you can do about it. It's just the way it is. It hurts when people come in here and tell me funny stories, because I have to laugh. I throw them out after the first or second one, because it really hurts. Same thing goes when you do certain exercise with your arms, obviously. But, you know, you just got to tough it out and do these things because it's going to take three months for that to heal. You know, you can't allow yourself to just rest for three months and then get going because then you have such an uphill that it's going to take forever to get up the slope. So I keep pushing.

KENNY BRACK: There's not a lot of time to pass, to be honest with you. With three good workouts a day, you know, maybe a couple of visits, phone calls, all the other stuff that goes with it, I'm pretty busy from basically 9:00 in the morning to 5:00, 6:00 in the evening. Then you have to shower, do all that stuff. Of course, maybe there's a the little downtime sometimes. Maybe I play the guitar a little bit. I haven't done that much of it because, like I said, I haven't had that much time. But it's really kind of -- I feel kind of busy. It's not boring by any stretch of the imagination.

KENNY BRACK: I think it's going to be great. I think, you know, obviously I'll be slowed down a little bit. That might be a good thing even, you never know. But I look forward to it very much. I don't think the accident changed any thoughts of that for me. But obviously it's going to put a little more strain on my wife because she's going -- she's obviously got more homework to do with me in this state, and then having a child here in the end of December. But my parents probably will come over from Sweden, you know, sometime in December to support us a little bit. So I think it will be very well. It will be fine.

KENNY BRACK: Well, you know, I didn't wake up until Thursday. So, obviously, I wasn't worried about a thing, at least not that I can remember. You know, after the accident, I was kind of out of it. But, yeah, for sure, she's gone through a lot. But she's a strong woman. She's helped me a lot. Obviously, we made sure, and the doctors in Dallas made sure, you know, that everything was okay with everything. I think everything has been a positive from that perspective. There hasn't been any problems.

KENNY BRACK: Well, it depends on how you look at it. I think it's important to understand that it was an extremely big accident. It was very close for me not to make it. So if you have that reference point to where I am today, I think it's been incredible, the amount of, you know, positive outlook and progress that we made. I think perhaps maybe some people didn't realize how serious it was from the beginning. Obviously, if you start higher up from the scale, then obviously it's another picture. But I think it's been going very well, and I'm feeling very well now. But it was very critical for a couple of days after the accident. But even though I was in and out of consciousness and stuff like that, when I was conscious, apparently I was in good spirits and joked and stuff like that. But I cannot remember any of that. The first thing I remember was Thursday after the race, when I woke up, had a big tube down my throat. I didn't like that too much, but I was tied down not to be able to, you know, pull it out or whatever. I was kind of getting weaned off the medicine. On Friday, they took the tube out and it was a lot better obviously. But it was quite dramatic for a few days.

KENNY BRACK: I think that I had kind of a subconscious understanding of what was going on because one thing that I can say that has struck me as very -- well, I've been kind of pleasantly surprised about it is, during this whole process, I haven't had one negative thought in my mind. It's always been positive thoughts. It's been getting better. It's been focusing on the important stuff. It's not been focusing on stuff I cannot influence. I think that has helped me tremendously to recover, as well. It's easy, I think, when you lay in a hospital room to start thinking about all the other aspects of things. But for me, I've been grateful to be here in this world still. Like I said a little earlier, I think I must have had some good help from above to even get through this. Then all the doctors have said that, you know, despite all the injuries and the seriousness of it all, they have said that, you know, they think I'm going to make a hundred percent recovery. With that, what more can you really ask after going through something like this? I've been very positive. Like I say, that's a surprise because I feel that in general life, normally I'm pretty levelheaded. I'm not negative, but I never really look at things from a very positive side. I always try to expect the worst, then do the best. But in this position, I really just thought just tackle it from a positive attitude. That I think is very important. You never really know how you're going to react to something like this until you're in this position. But I've been handling it very well, I think.

KENNY BRACK: Well, you know, that's a decision that, of course, I would like to take on my own instead of being forced by some injury to take. But, you know, I don't know that yet. I don't have any thoughts of that. I know that I've had lots of support from all the people that's been close to me, from my wife, from Team Rahal, they've been extremely supportive, all the doctors have been extremely professional, from the racing league, and everybody, all the fans, we had thousands and thousands of fan mail. You know, my thoughts right now is full recovery. That's nothing less. That's what I aim on. When it gets to the point when the decision has to be made, we'll make one. I don't think it's that time to do so in my position right now. So we'll take it one step at a time basically. But I have no such thoughts that this might be the end of my career unless I want it to.

KENNY BRACK: No, not yet. It's been really no point yet because I've been, you know, transferring from hospital to hospital. They will come over when things settle down a little bit, when we come back home. That's when we're going to need the most help, December and January, stuff like that. But I've had, you know, Swedish people here on visit. Right now Jan Nielsen (sp) is here. I've had friends here, lots of other people that I know, of course. In terms of mom and dad, they're going to come -- we decided early they're going to come when we get back to Columbus, Ohio, and help out.

KENNY BRACK: It means a lot. I mean, in a situation like this, that's tremendous to have something like that. I tell you, I never really thought there was that many people that really, really cared about racing. But it's been overwhelming, to be honest. It's been several thousand e-mails and messages, postcards, all kinds of things. It's been really, really tremendous.

KENNY BRACK: It's just, you know, when you end up in a position like this where you can't use your legs for a while, where you break your breastbone, so you can't really use your arms a lot, you break your back, so you can't really twist and turn, and you break your femur, so you can't really put any pressure on the leg from any side, then you getting pretty handicapped. Luckily, I didn't break any of my arms. It's basically transferring myself from the bed to the wheelchair, you know. Like I say, I can't put any pressure on my legs. My breastbone is broken, so it hurts when I push with my arms. But you've got to do it, you know, otherwise you get stuck in the bed. That's one simple thing. You know, going to the restroom is another. Taking a shower. Just basic stuff like that, moving about in the wheelchair, up and down ramps, uphill, downhill, it's just many, many small things that you never think about when you're normal like up and mobile. You never think about stuff. You never think about hard it really is to get out of bed and do breakfast in the morning. It is a big process to get all the legs to work and arms, you know, thought process, getting all the stuff. But when you're in this position, you really -- it's a real eye-opener how much effort is really is to do a simple thing like that even. It's stuff like that.

KENNY BRACK: Yes, I have.

KENNY BRACK: My reactions, I mean, you know, obviously I know the result. But I can say that it was an extremely big crash, and I'm very happy to be able to sit here and do recovery now. You know, I think it shows several things. Obviously, it shows that the cars are very safe. I think it shows that the safety team at the track are very, very good, all the doctors. It really showed me my team, you know, the support I've had from them and my wife and everybody and friends. It also shows that there are risks involved with motor racing. I mean, it's high speeds, and things happen. There can be huge consequences. I paid the cheap price.

KENNY BRACK: I remember the driver introductions before the race, the stuff that happened before that obviously. Also I remember pit stops in the race. But I don't remember any of the driving, and nothing of the actual crash. I remember that I woke up on Thursday after the crash at the hospital.

KENNY BRACK: Well, I don't think it's as easy as that. I got to look at all the different incidents. You know, I think in general they're pretty safe. I think everything can always be improved. As always in motor racing, everybody's trying to improve every little bit. Safety, as well, can be improved, I'm sure. But, you know, the league is working hard on that. The tracks are working hard on it. You know, I think that I don't have a particular problem with the flat bottom cars. I can't really think of that being the sole reason for a lot of accidents.

KENNY BRACK: I was a little worried when they put that piece of paint through my hand. They had a thing where they explained all the risks. There seems to be a lot of risks with it. But, you know, also in the United States they always have to make sure the patient understand everything, that they sometimes go a little overboard. But in reality, I'm not worried about it. I know I'm good hands with Dr. Terry Trammell. He's one of the world's best surgeons when it comes to this type of injury. Obviously he's a racing doctor and he's been around racing accidents for most of his career and is used to taking care of back surgery and spine surgery and stuff like that. There is also going to be another operation made, surgery made, at the same time on my right ankle, which is going to be performed by Dr. Scheid who is also very well-known in racing, you know, circles and have taken care of many similar accidents. He's going to just make some surfaces a little more even in that joint just to make it even better. But it's going to be made simultaneously. They think that it's going to take roughly around three, four hours. So, you know, I feel very confident. I'm in good hands. I know that once this is over, the spine will be stronger than it was from the beginning, and that's good to know. From that point, it's just to do all the rehab that's necessary. It's going to for sure, you know, set me back maybe another week because obviously when you wake up after surgery, I'm not going to be in this shape tomorrow night because obviously it's going to take a lot of energy and it's going to hurt a little bit. That's short-term. It's no problem.

KENNY BRACK: I don't think it has changed me in my views, but it certainly -- when you go through something like this, other things that happen, you got to start thinking about there must be a bigger picture out there somehow. I'm quite sure that I've had some help to go through this from God or somebody to really be able to do it. That's what I believe. I haven't changed my ways of doing things or thinking or whatever, but in a thing like this, it becomes pretty apparent that you're not in charge completely.

KENNY BRACK: It was obviously very, very sad. Great driver. Just signed up with a great team. Then something like that happens. You know, it's the first test day. Like I said, it makes you wonder what really -- who's in charge.