Injuries, disease don't keep Sutton from dream

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) -- Doctors told Kelly Sutton she'd be living her life in a wheelchair by now. She refused to listen.

Sutton is competing in her first full season in the Craftsman Truck Series, despite a struggle with multiple sclerosis and a career filled with injuries.

She has not done as well as she would have liked so far -- she's 28th in the standings -- but being behind the wheel in NASCAR is more than she ever expected.

	Sutton finished 23rd in the last Craftsman Truck Series race at Sparta, Ky. Credit: Autostock

"Even if I don't make it any further, I never thought I'd be here anyway," said Sutton, who competed in four races last year but is still considered a rookie. "So this is a dream come true for me."

The dream began early for Sutton. She started riding motorcycles at 10, go-karts at 12 -- with some nasty wrecks along the way.

"I broke my leg at 10 on a motorcycle, real bad," she said. "Had my first surgery at 12. Got out of the hospital from that; it wasn't a couple of months later that I got spinal meningitis. Then, when I was 13 I crashed again.

"I was a very active child," she said.

Sutton can joke about it now, but she nearly died in the second crash. Her father, Ed, had to dig dirt out of her mouth to keep her from suffocating. Tests showed spots on her brain, but doctors assumed they were the result of her head injuries.

She recovered from the crash, but things still weren't quite right.

"After that I just started having symptoms -- like my gait was off, my running slowed down ... I was tired all the time," she said. "Then, when I was 16 and lost all my feeling in my right side, I didn't know what was going on."

The diagnosis was a shock.

"I didn't know much about MS anyway, so it never even crossed my mind, and when they told me that, I was pretty devastated," she said.

Sutton has relapsing-remitting MS, meaning her symptoms -- numbness and fatigue -- are not steady. With the help of daily injections, she has not had a relapse in eight years.

Still, her prognosis at 16 was not good.

"They told me I had eight to 10 years to walk," she said. "At the time there was no therapies available, no treatments or anything. It was basically go home and lay down. And when you're 16 years old, you're not willing to do that."

Three years later, her father had a proposition.

Looking ahead  Heading into Saturday's Ram Tough 200 at Gateway, Dennis Setzer leads the Craftsman Truck Series standings. However, that lead is down to just six points, as red-hot Bobby Hamilton is breathing down Setzer's neck.  •  Complete story, click here

"My dad came to me and asked me, 'Do you still want to drive a race car?" and I said, 'Yeah, can I? I have MS," she said. "And he said, 'Well, you can do anything you set your mind to, and if that's what you want to do we'll do it as long as you're able to.' That's when I started racing."

Ed Sutton declined to be interviewed, citing a desire to keep the spotlight on his daughter.

His daughter competed for three years, winning seven feature races, in the Pro Mini-Stock Series at Old Dominion Speedway in Manassas, Va. Then, another disaster.

In 1995, when she had her first opportunity to go to Daytona with the NASCAR Goody's Dash car, she hit a patch of ice and crashed into a tree. She landed in a trauma center with a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and other injuries.

"I had surgery after that, and then in '96 I had a real bad attack of my MS," she said.

Eight years after her diagnosis, Sutton was in the wheelchair her doctors had predicted for her. But by 1997, she was back racing.

Since beginning her drug treatment the following year, she has had no relapses. The lead sponsor of her truck is Copaxone, the trade name of the anti-MS drug she takes.

Sutton's first full season in the Truck Series has not been an easy one.

She has failed to qualify for three of 11 races, and has finished no higher than 20th. She finished 23rd in her last race, Saturday's Built Ford Tough 225 in Lexington, Ky.

But her new crew chief, Tim Shutt, said Sutton has the potential to be a contender.

"It's a four-letter word called 'time,"' Shutt said. "Time and experience is all it is. She definitely has the desire and ability.

"I've worked with some rookie drivers, some of them several years ago, and they're just now starting to contend," he said. "It doesn't have anything to do with being female, having MS, not having MS."