KELLY SUTTON
(Photo by Barb Suanders)
People With MS and the Courage to Give
Chapter 24: Never Give Up Hope
WE COULD ALL WAKE UP every morning and decide not to get out of bed. But I say, hang on. Go for your dreams. And never give up hope.
Ever since I was five years old I knew I wanted to be a racecar driver, just like my dad. My family and I would spend every weekend at the racetrack, and even back then you could often find me under the hood of one of my dad’s racecars. If I wasn’t getting dirty, I wasn’t having fun.
I also loved playing softball. But by the time I was thirteen I was already starting to slow down. In that one year I went from being the fastest runner on my team to the slowest. My batting average dropped. And where before I would always get my homework done so I could go out and ride my motorcycle, I started coming home from school and going to sleep.
My mom and dad took me to the doctor but all we were ever told was that I was “just a teenager looking for attention.” They said I was depressed—for three years we went through that.
At fifteen I started building my first racecar, but I quit because of my health. I just lost interest. By the time I was sixteen years old I had lost all feeling on my right side. My mom called and begged the doctor to see me; before he even examined me he pulled my mom aside and told her it was all in my head.
When he examined me he was surprised to find that my whole right side really was numb. He sent me to a neurologist, who did an MRI and a spinal tap and diagnosed me with MS. But he sent me to a specialist at Johns Hopkins just to be sure. They confirmed that I had MS.
I remember hearing the diagnosis and actually being relieved because I had almost started believing what the doctors were saying—that I was just looking for attention. I’m really lucky my parents never once believed it was psychological and kept looking for answers with me. Now we had our answer.
After the relief, though, I crashed, thinking my life had come to an end. I would never be a racecar driver after all. By the time I was nineteen I went into remission. My dad came to me and asked me if I still wanted to race, and my first question was, “Can I?” Without missing a beat, he said, “You’re a Sutton and a Sutton never quits.” He said we would be racing before anything else happened to me. So we went racing and my dream of racing at Daytona came back to life.
In 1995, I was going to get my first opportunity to race at Daytona International Speedway. I can hardly describe how excited I was. But on my way to Mom and Dad’s house I hit a patch of ice and slammed into a tree, head on, going about fifty miles per hour. I broke all my ribs on my right side, had a collapsed lung, a dislocated hip, dislocated shoulder, and a lot of other injuries. Needless to say, my dream of racing Daytona that year didn’t come true.
I did manage to race one race after that, but my injuries were so bad I wasn’t really able to complete. In 1996 my MS came out of remission and I ended up in a wheelchair. The doctors told me this was probably it for me. My dad was determined to see me race, so he made me what looked like a go-cart, with wheels and pedals hooked to shocks. He told me that I needed to get up and work out so we could go racing again. After getting the okay from my doctor I worked out and came back again!
We started racing around in the UC Series, the Allison Legacy Series, the Mini Stocks. In 1998 we went to the PARTS Pro Truck Series. Life was fun again.
Then one day in 1999, something kind of miraculous happened. I was working at the restaurant where I’d been working for a few years, when a lady came in with her two kids. I asked the kids why they weren’t in school. They said their dad was participating in an MS advocacy program, and I told them I thought that was really cool. Then I told them I had MS, too. I also told them I raced cars but that I didn’t have one at the moment.
That’s when their mother asked if I was the Kelly Sutton who drives trucks. When I nodded, she asked me if I was taking the same prescribed treatment her husband was taking. And when I said yes, she got all excited and gave me the telephone number for the drug rep. She told me to call her and tell her who I was and explain that I was looking for a sponsor. I did, and when the rep heard that I was the Kelly Sutton who raced in the PARTS Pro Truck Series, the company asked me to be part of their team! In 2000 I actually got to drive in the Daytona International Speedway, but during my second lap of qualifying the engine blew. I began to wonder if I was really meant to race at Daytona.
But we didn’t give up. In 2001 we came back and raced at Daytona. We were running twelfth with just two laps to go, when my fuel pump quit. I had just gone into the pits. I could have just stopped and given up but, like with my MS, I kept pushing forward. My crew got me back out there and I finished twenty-first.
In 2002 we qualified thirty-fourth and finished the race in eleventh place. This year—2003—we blew a power valve in the carburetor right before we qualified. We qualified eleventh and finished seventeenth because the race was shortened by rain.
I am the first person with MS known to race in any NASCAR series. Now I’m determined to be the first woman to win the pole at Daytona in a NASCAR series.
For me, racing is all about the challenge. It’s about doing things no one else has done. It’s about doing things I once thought were impossible. This is the way I deal with my MS. I don’t let anything stop me, and if something starts to go wrong I just fight back and try to get it fixed.
Next year we are going to run the trucks at Daytona, the Craftsman Truck Series. I will continue to race and fulfill my dream. I won’t let MS define me. I am a wife, mother, and racecar driver. I just happen to live with MS. After living with it for fifteen years, I’ve learned a few things: I listen to my body, I know the importance of early treatment, and I also know the value in not sitting back and dwelling on it, in living our dreams, no matter what. Sure, I could wake up every morning and decide not to get out of bed. But I say, hang on. Go for your dreams. And never give up hope.
You can visit Kelly Sutton’s Website at: www.kellygirlsutton.com
prev: Late Bloomer
