(a nice inspiring story about #51-Kurt Busch)’¦’¦With practiced briskness, Kurt Busch pulls on a pair of rubber surgical gloves and slips into a disposable hospital smock ‘ both non-negotiable requirements for a visit to a third-floor room in the Critical Care Unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. There is anger in the eyes of the wounded soldier lying on the hospital bed, connected to a wall of IV drips and vital-sign monitors. That’s not quite accurate. The bed sheets drawn up to the stomach fail to hide a stark reality ‘ that the soldier propped up at a 30-degree angle is really half a soldier. An improvised explosive device (IED) in Afghanistan, on his third tour of combat duty, removed his legs and everything else up to the lower torso. The remains of his organs are held in by mesh. But the anger is real, and so is the sense of bewilderment, as the 24-year-old soldier named Joseph contemplates a life without walking, without unaided motion, without sex. On July 9, Joseph is not quite six weeks removed from the explosion that blew away the lower half of his body. ‘It’s rare that you see someone who’s that angry this early,’ Patricia Driscoll would say later. Driscoll is Kurt Busch’s girlfriend, a powerful counterweight to a mercurial former NASCAR Sprint Cup champion trying to find balance in his life. Driscoll also is president and CEO of the Armed Forces Foundation, and in that capacity, she has moved mountains for Joseph and his family. When labor union red tape threatened to prevent Joseph’s father from sharing what might have been the last days of his son’s life, Driscoll used a combination of persuasion and clout to bring the father to Walter Reed without fear of losing his job. Busch tries to break the ice with Joseph, who has had little exposure to NASCAR racing. The meeting is halting at first, but during a visit that lasts nearly an hour, the driver and the soldier achieve a rapport. Joseph revisits the day his life changed forever. n you get hit with an IED, it’s supposed to knock you unconscious,’ Joseph said. ‘That didn ‘t happen to me. I remember everything. I felt everything. . . .’ Despite his ordeal, Joseph is surprisingly strong. He exercises his arms using tethers suspended from a bar above his bed. Busch discovers just how strong Joseph is when he challenges the solider to a good-natured bout of arm wrestling. At the end of the visit, Busch signs NASCAR hero cards for Joseph and his family. Joseph promises to tune in to the Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series races at New Hampshire, and there is every sense he will keep that promise. As they leave the room, Driscoll slips a check for $3,000 to Joseph’s father to help with bills at home while he stays with his son at the hospital.(see much more at NASCAR Wire Service)(7-29-2012)
