Mark has tried to be a patient patient.
OK, there was the one slip up after his back surgery. Two
days after coming home from the hospital, Mark felt so good
he thought it wouldn't hurt anything to slip off for a little
while with Roush Racing teammate Jeff Burton.
Burton had stopped by Mark's home just outside of Daytona
Beach, Fla., for a visit. Mark took Burton to lunch and
they took a short ride to see Burton's plane that he had used
to make the visit. "When I came in the phone was ringing," Mark said. "It was
my doctor, who said, 'Hey, we can do this all over again but
you won't race Daytona.'" Mark had been busted.
For nearly six weeks after the lumbar fusion operation he had
on Nov. 22, the day after the 1999 season's final race at
Atlanta, he was supposed to stay in the bed all the time
except for five 20-minute periods each day. It took him
longer than 20 minutes to go to lunch and go see Burton's
plane. "A couple of hours later," Mark said, "my back swelled up.
So I figured after that I had better be doing what the doctor
said."
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So for the rest of the recovery period,
Mark did as he was told. He said about a month into the recovery that the bed
felt like it was growing teeth, but he knew what was at stake.
He had carefully timed the operation, designed to relieve
Mark of the excruciating pain he endured while racing for
much of the past two seasons. "They rolled me into the
operating room at 7 a.m. Monday after Atlanta," he said. "That's really the way it needed to
be because I wanted to use every ounce of time I had for
recovery." It appears that the plan has worked.
After the six-week period of bed rest, Mark returned to his
doctor and got the go-ahead to begin increasing his daily
activities. He concluded the seventh week after the operation
on Saturday by attending the T. Wayne Robertson Memorial
Winston Cup Preview in Winston-Salem, his first racing-related
appearance since the end of last season.
"Man, I feel like a brand new person," Mark said.
"My strength is coming back, my stamina is coming back, I'm
pain-free and I'm really, really excited about what my future
holds for me.
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"I had no idea I was in as
much pain as I was and how much it was ruining the
quality of my life." Mark swears his racing wasn't
hampered by the back problem, saying the most
comfortable he ever was before the surgery
was when he was braced into his driver's seat. He couldn't,
however, bend down and pick up his son without severe pain.
Without the surgery, things would have only gotten worse.
Mark had actually prepared himself for a back operation at
the end of the 1998 season, a comparatively minor procedure
to remove a fragment. He had a cold when he went in, however,
and his doctors made him wait a couple of days. Then, he was
told that removing the fragment wouldn't end the chronic pain.
That would require fusion. "I spent almost a year
preparing for taking a fragment out and I was already
almost a week behind," he said. "I wasn't
prepared for fusion. Mentally, I didn't know if that was what
I wanted to do and I just wanted to go home. So that's what
I did."
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In July, however, as he
practiced for the Pepsi 400 at Daytona, Mark hit the
wall hard and hurt, among other things, his knee. Dr.
Chuck Kollmer treated him after that wreck, and Mark
grew to trust him. Kollmer wound up performing the
lumbar fusion in November. It seems like a short time
since the end of last season for most people in racing,
but Mark's convalescence has changed his perspective on
that. "Even after the season there is so much typically going on
when you're in good health that you don't really get away
from the sport," he said. "I've spent seven weeks totally
away from the sport and I didn't realize what a difference
that really makes and how much I really missed it.
"I have a bigger smile on my face this year than I've ever
had since I started racing, I think, and I will embrace this
season with more enthusiasm."
Mark, third behind Dale Jarrett and Bobby Labonte in last
year's points race, now awaits the start of that new season.
He has said since before his operation that he had no plans
to get back in his No. 6 Ford until Feb. 11, the day practice
for the Daytona 500 actually begins.
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But he is feeling pretty
good these days, and the Ford teams do test at Daytona
on Thursday and Friday of this week. Greg Biffle will
be driving Mark's car. At least most of the time, he
will. "I've got an appointment to see my doctor on
Thursday mid-morning," Mark said. "Then I plan to go out to the
race track. The way things are going really well, he said
I could take some laps if I wanted to. I originally told
them that I didn't need to, that it wasn't important to me,
but I probably will take the car out once or twice."
Just to make sure, Mark said, there's nothing about the
new 2000 Taurus that throws up a red flag.
Besides, he has been such a good boy.
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