Race Day & Emergency Brain Surgery

Nolan with Kasey Kahne

 Nolan had this dream of meeting Carl Edwards.  So after his second round of chemo our good friend Marta took Nolan up to the infield at Atlanta Motor Speedway.  The drivers would walk from their RV's to the garages and stop to talk to him and sign his hat.  Unfortunately before Carl Edwards came out Nolan had to go to the restroom :(  We rushed him off, but he couldn't get back in time.  All these guys are on time schedules and can't wait.  Nolan hung around until he couldn't handle it anymore.  Nolan was still extremely fatigued and just couldn't handle being out for too long. So we left in hopes of maybe later...

Nolan with Richard Petty

Later didn't come this time.  Nolan woke up the next day with the worst headache ever.  He was grabbing both sides of his head and screaming.  I rushed him to the ER in Atlanta.  They did an emergency CT scan which revealed a major Subdural Hematoma.  Nolan had so much blood in his head, his entire brain had shifted and one of his ventricles had collapsed.  The worst part of all this was Nolan had no ANC (no immune system).  We couldn't wait for his ANC to rise, he needed surgery right away.  The risks were horrible, but Nolan made it through.  They ended up putting another shunt in to drain the blood into his stomach.  Keeping everything on the inside would reduce his risk of infection.  To this day Nolan still hast two shunts that drain his CSF fluid into his stomach.

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This is one of Nolan's incision after surgery.  He also had one on the other side of his head and across his stomach (they had to go in his stomach and change a valve on his shunt)

This is our friend Walter from the races.  Everyone was so touched by Nolan's story and wanted to do something special for him.  They all pitched in and bought this Aflac helmet for him and made sure Carl Edwards signed it.  Nolan was so in LOVE with this helmet and still is!  It's stays safely tucked away.