Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
NASCAR star Tyler Reddick has shared a “promising” update on his son, Rookie, who recently underwent surgery due to a tumor. Reddick shared the update Saturday at Phoenix Raceway ahead of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship. “For the most part, he’s a lot healthier, which is good,” Tyler Reddick said, according to NBC Sports. “Still have some things to sort out in regards to some of the things that he’s been fighting. But the for the most part, it looks promising.” Reddick’s wife, Alexa, announced last month that Rookie was going to have to have a kidney removed because it was no longer functioning. She added that, “Rookie has a tumor that’s ‘choking’ the renal vein and renal artery. Telling the heart, ‘Hey, I’m not getting enough blood… pump harder.’ Causing the enlarged heart." Tyler Reddick said this past weekend that as of now, it doesn’t seem as though their son will need any further surgeries. “I don’t think there will be any need for any more surgeries, depending on if the tumor grows back, some other things happen,” Reddick said, according to NBC. “There might be some more treatments that come up, but largely it seems like the crazier days are behind us. But we have some little things to sort out.” Alexa Reddick originally announced in late September that Rookie had been “showing signs of heart failure that were being missed.” Rookie had been in the cardiovascular ICU at the Levine’s Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tyler Reddick said that it was hard to focus on races the past several weeks as his son was in the hospital dealing with medical issues. “My focus was not on racing at all,” Reddick said, per NBC. “But, I feel like we were still able to go out and perform well. I was able to, in a very condensed way, look back at my notes. Only a couple of times through the process was I able to do some preparation, which again, wasn’t a high priority. “Things just fell in the right place where I was able to race. In a lot of ways, it was hard to say how it affected my performance because racing was the last thing on my mind for a long period of time.” Reddick finished 9th in this year’s NASCAR Cup Series Standings, a year after winning the NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship. As for Rookie, Reddick shared that he is now home after a lengthy hospital stay.
