Mark may have set a record for doing business while flat on
his back. During a three-week blitz recently, Mark sold his
Daytona Beach house, bought another airplane hanger, sold his
Lear Citation, signed two big-league endorsement contracts
and accomplished several other business-related missions. He
did all of it while lying flat on his back on a couch in his
office and personal office as he continues to recover and
heal from a delicate back operation -- a lumbar fusion --
performed on Nov. 22.
And last week the best news of all -- the operation was a
success. The fusion worked and now Mark can step up his
rehab efforts. "The pain I had is 100 percent gone,"
Mark said. "I have more limitations than I had before the
surgery. The pain I had is all gone. The pain I do have is
surgery trauma related, not nerve related. "That's really
good news. I hit bottom and now I'm starting to crawl my way
back out after five and a half weeks of 22 hours a day of
laying down. That takes its toll on you mentally and
physically. This is the part I like, where you're able to
start coming back and recovering."
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Mark, who celebrated his 41st birthday Sunday, said he
staved off boredom by wheeling and dealing business
transactions instead of becoming a soap opera addict. "I've
got a portable telephone, an address book and a notebook in
my lap," Mark said. "We've done a whole lot of business
transactions that I could orchestrate from the couch. I
didn't feel good and I wasn't interested in the TV. We did
some major stuff."
Before I go much further, Mark sold his gigantic home but
he's not leaving town. He's moving down the street a few
blocks to another house he owns. "The big house is nice but
we decided it was more house than we needed," said Mark,
who lives here with his wife Arlene and their son Matt.
"It's beautiful but we didn't use a whole lot of the house.
There's no use having it if you're not going to use it. I'm
staying here in Daytona." Mark is mobile, but you won't see
him at Daytona International Speedway until Jan. 21. His
Roush Racing Ford will be here, with Roush Racing teammate
Greg Biffle -- one of Roush's drivers in the NASCAR Craftsman
Truck Series -- at the wheel, that day testing for the
Daytona 500.
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He has a doctor's appointment Jan. 20 and if he gets the
final OK he'll take a few laps in the car he'll race in the
Daytona 500. "If everything is going as it appears to be
going he said I could drive the car for a few laps," Mark
chirped. "It's not necessary, but if he says I can, I'll
probably take it out and see what it feels like because the
rules will be quite different for the shocks and stuff. "That
will give me a chance to see how the car feels so I don't get
a complete surprise on Feb. 11."
Although per the NASCAR 2000 test policy, teams are limited
to using one driver per test day, a NASCAR official said
Tuesday Mark would be permitted to take a limited number
of laps to assess his own fitness, as opposed to determining
the car's set-up if he gets medical clearance. Mark has
been in therapy for three weeks. Now that the bone has fused,
he can pick up the pace on healing. He's working five days a
week on getting stronger. "I'm up and about and walking based
on how I feel," Mark said. "I'm just reading my body and
feeding it what it'll take without over doing it or setting
it back. I have no time for setbacks.
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"We're just now starting to move. For five and a half weeks
I could not move my trunk from my butt to midways up my back.
Now I can move. We're just working our way through it." This
rehab experience has changed Mark's outlook at life in
general and racing in particular. He said the surgery and
down time was nearly like spending time in an isolation
chamber. "Having this down time certainly cleared my mind
and I will race the race season with a new enthusiasm that
I've never had before," he said. "I will have been totally
removed from the racing world for eight weeks, which has
never happened before.
"For eight weeks I will not have signed one autograph or
been to one appearance. You can't believe how much you miss
25 years of racing when you're totally isolated from it.
In that respect I think it's good because I'll embrace the
demands in a different way than I ever have before."
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