What is with this guy? Seemed to be at a career high with Penske and CART in the late nineties - it all seems to have gone downhill when his daughter's legs stopped working and woke up paralyzed.
Cody Unser was by all accounts a healthy teenager until a basketball practice in February 1999 when
she suddenly began struggling for air and was overcome by a blinding headache. Twenty-four hours
later, the 12-year-old was paralyzed from the waist down.
Cody, whose father is racing great Al Unser, was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a rare neurological
disorder caused by inflammation of the spinal cord, according to the National Center for Neurological
Disorders and Stroke. The inflammation can damage or destroy myler nerve cell fibers, and that damage
causes scars that interrupt communication between the nerves in the spinal cord and the rest of the body.
Since then he just hasn't been the same. It's rather sad, given that open wheel could use some names to give it a boost. CART / IRL is circling the bowl (largely self inflicted IMHO) and events like this push it further down. Not that I wouldn't love to see Tony George and the IRL crumble.
|
