Out of the driver's seat
An inside look at NASCAR racer Bobby Hamilton's cancer journey
As a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion, Bobby Hamilton Sr. is used to life zooming by at speeds topping 200 miles per hour. But cancer slowed his pace this year, and forced him to put the brakes on his lifelong passion of racing, to fight a disease that brings everyone to an even playing field in an instant.
It started with what Hamilton thought was a wisdom tooth problem. He had it pulled, but his throat was still swollen. Before coming to Vanderbilt, Hamilton had surgery to drain what appeared to be a swollen lymph node. He awoke from surgery to news of a dramatically different kind. "I knew because I saw the expression on the doctor's face. Something told me that it was cancer," said Hamilton. He had a two centimeter tumor on the right side of his neck and a few smaller tumors removed, but a primary tumor site was never found.
Hamilton said he was never a smoker and didn't chew tobacco. "I had no idea. When you think of cancer, you think smoking, alcohol, chewing. I took a puff off a cigarette when I was 8, and I don't drink alcohol very often," he said. Hamilton's father also faced throat cancer, but he said his own diagnosis was still a shock. "Everyone thinks it can't happen to them. To have neck cancer, there are such a high percentage of men that get it for no reason. I think I probably had it for years," he said. The number 18 driver, typically at home behind his Fastenal Dodge Ram racing vehicle, was forced to hang up his helmet and step out of the driver's seat after racing his last run at Atlanta Motor Speedway in early March 2006. His son, Bobby Jr., would race in his father's place for the remainder of the season. "You never want to think about a fill-in driver for yourself, especially when you are so passionate about your racing career," said Hamilton Sr. "But to have my son in a position to race for me means the world to me."
Hamilton turned to Vanderbilt-Ingram for his cancer treatment. It involved 11 rounds of chemotherapy and 33 radiation treatments. It required Hamilton to make daily visits to the clinic. He quickly realized he'd need to fight this less like a high-speed race, and more like a long, slow marathon.
The intense radiation he needed to treat the cancer in his neck burned him inside and out. "I couldn't swallow my own spit for weeks," said Hamilton. So a feeding tube was placed in his stomach to allow him to avoid swallowing anything until he was healed. Hamilton spent just under a week in the hospital on two occasions, dehydrated and weak. "I couldn't even take pain medication by mouth," he added. "I was scared. I didn't know what to expect. The thought of what cancer does to you, it is phenomenal that people survive. That just shows how strong we are that we do," said Hamilton.
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