Tyler Reddick admits that he didn’t focus much on racing over the last six weeks of the NASCAR Cup Series season.
Ever since doctors discovered a kidney tumor in his baby, Rookie, his focus has been more on his son’s health. Rookie, who was born May 25, had surgery to remove the kidney and returned home the last week of October.
Reddick said he considered not racing for about five weeks, and it wasn’t until last week that he seemed fully comfortable in the car.
Tyler Reddick finally feels comfortable driving again now that his younger son’s health is heading in a better direction.
The tumor in Rookie’s kidney was pressing up against an artery and was causing signs of heart failure. With the tumor removed, the stress on his heart has been alleviated.
“He’s doing a lot better,” Reddick said Saturday prior to qualifying for the season finale at Phoenix Raceway. “We still have some things to sort through. The surgery went with no complications. His heart function has been quickly returning to normal.
“We’re just adjusting and understanding what, as parents, we’ve got to be careful with him only having one kidney. We still have got some other things to figure out, but mostly it seems like he’s going in the right direction.”
Before the diagnosis in late September, Reddick and his wife, Alexa, knew there was something wrong with Rookie, but doctors didn’t initially pinpoint the problem. Doctors at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte diagnosed the tumor.
“For months, my wife saw these things going on, and we went to get them addressed, and they got chalked up as ‘Oh, he’s colicky, maybe has an allergy, it might be this, might be that.’ All these little things, which is understandable when you’re working with a general pediatrician,” Reddick said.
Tyler Reddick captured the pole at Charlotte as he and his family worked with doctors to help his son get healthy.
“How things were going, it just became obvious that something’s wrong. She made a decision that Friday I was heading to Kansas to take him to Levine’s, and they were able to figure out pretty quickly he’s having heart failure and all sorts of other things going on.”
Reddick said Rookie is a lot healthier and “it’s looking promising.”
“He’s gaining weight, in a much happier mood, just happy and smiling all the time,” Reddick said. “He was in a lot of pain for a long time, and I’m glad that a lot of those issues have been resolved.”
It was also tough on his five-year-old son Beau, as Reddick and his wife had to be at the hospital and friends and family took care of Beau. And now, Rookie has had trouble sleeping in a quiet house after all the sounds in the hospital.
Reddick said he obviously couldn’t prepare for races as he had during much of the season.
“My focus was not on racing at all, but I feel like we were still able to go out and perform well,” Reddick said. “I was able to, in a very condensed way, look back at my notes. Only a couple of times through the process, I was able to do some preparation.
“It wasn’t a high priority. Things just fell in the right place where I was able to still go race. In a lot of ways, it’s hard to say how it affected my performance because racing was last on my mind for a long period of time.”
Reddick said Rookie’s health was on his mind for weeks before Kansas, but once there was the diagnosis Kansas weekend, Reddick hasn’t had a normal schedule. He was eliminated from playoff contention the week after Kansas at the Charlotte road course.
“I’d say before we went to the hospital, we were aware of these things,” Reddick said. “Pretty much from the time you went into the hospital, my priorities just changed and I was OK with that.”
He also said he would have missed a race if he felt that’s what he needed.
“It was certainly on the table, pretty much from Kansas up until [Phoenix] weekend. I’d say any of those, depending on how things go, I was totally fine with not being here,” Reddick said.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
