NICK SCHWIEN • Hays Daily News Josh Hudson competes in a stock car heat race May 20 at RPM Speedway in Hays. Hudson went on to win the feature that night.

Hudson makes return to racing

By NICK SCHWIEN

nschwien@dailynews.net

It was a year ago when Josh Hudson realized there was something wrong.

He won back-to-back races during the Osborne County Fair on the half-mile track, but he was unable to get out of the car.

Instead, he was starting to have another blackout spell.

"The last two times I was in the car, I couldn't stand after I won," he said. "When I came out of turn four one time, I started blacking out, seeing stars. I decided I needed to quit before I ended up hurting myself, or worse, somebody else."

The Kensington stock car driver walked away that night, with help. His racing career was in doubt.

He went to doctors to try to figure out why he was having the blackout spells. He underwent several spinal taps as doctors tried to diagnose what was going wrong.

They never did find out. Instead, what happened next to Hudson was enough to jolt the life right out of him.

He developed an infection in his vertebrae and lost the use of the left side of his body.

"It got worse and worse," Hudson said.

"I couldn't move. The infection attacked my muscles, too. Any sudden movement and my muscles would lock up, like a cramp. It would bring tears to my eyes. They kept telling me it was from the trauma from the spinal taps."

Finally, the pain was too much to bear. An ambulance took Hudson from his home to Hays Medical Center, where a doctor diagnosed him with osteomyelitis, an infection of the vertebrae, most likely caused by a spinal tap.

But that diagnosis was a long time coming. He had visited six or seven doctors before that ambulance ride, and each "kept saying there's nothing wrong."

"I thought I was done. I did," he said. "My family on my dad's side is not known to live very long. That was going through the back of my mind. I didn't think I was going to live long because nobody would do anything about it. I figured I wasn't going to live long."

Doctors removed part of the vertebrae the infection killed, and he needed to undergo 10 weeks of IV treatment twice a day, which he was able to do in Phillipsburg, not far from Kensington.

He finally started to mend and eventually returned to work in May. Then he started his comeback on the track.

On May 20, Hudson won at RPM Speedway in Hays. Now, he's won two races so far this season and finished third Sunday night at Osborne during the first night of its fair races.

Hudson, who said the heat bothers him and causes headaches and his memory has faded some since the infection, just was pleased to be racing again -- let alone, winning.

"There's a lot of guys who might get one win in two or three years," Hudson said. "A lot of guys race for years and don't get a win. One of the first nights back, I got a win."

The stock car driver is thankful for all the help he's received during the last year, and not only on the track. And he's forever grateful to Steve and Jay Schmidt, who helped him get back into stock car racing a few years ago.

"My guys directly involved have helped, and the support from race fans has been amazing," he said. "They'd send money to help us out when I wasn't working and words of encouragement.

"What's funny is you expect support from your friends, and you get even more from those you don't know. Sometimes we take for granted our friends. ... This type of deal shows you who real, true friends are."