Just to think, Dean Goforth had all but sworn off turkey forever.

The day after Thanksgiving, a traditional workday at the Dean’s Casings business, the business namesake was having a hard time keeping his head in the workday. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weaker than usual.

Little did the 67-year old ADRL Extreme Pro Stock racing phenom know this would be the first day in a medical ordeal which would threaten his life.

“I told the girls in the office I felt better with a whiskey hangover, this turkey is killing me,” said Goforth. “I just told them a few times how I didn’t feel good at all.”

Goforth decided that whatever was ailing him, would best be treated with rest and headed home. He woke up the next morning to a misting rain and went out on his farm and fed his cows. He still didn’t feel better.

 
Just to think, Dean Goforth had all but sworn off turkey forever.

The day after Thanksgiving, a traditional workday at the Dean’s Casings business, the business namesake was having a hard time keeping his head in the workday. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weaker than usual.

Little did the 67-year old ADRL Extreme Pro Stock racing phenom know this would be the first day in a medical ordeal which would threaten his life.

“I told the girls in the office I felt better with a whiskey hangover, this turkey is killing me,” said Goforth. “I just told them a few times how I didn’t feel good at all.”

Goforth decided that whatever was ailing him, would best be treated with rest and headed home. He woke up the next morning to a misting rain and went out on his farm and fed his cows. He still didn’t feel better.

“I figured I was going to have to give up on working that day and go in to spend time with my wife watching television, that’s what she had wanted me to do anyway,” Goforth admitted. “I went in and sat in the recliner and being like any warm-blooded man, I fell asleep.”

Goforth slept until 2 PM, and feeling unnatural sleeping that far into the day, attempted to get up and couldn’t.

“My left hip hurt so bad and I had never had anything hurt me so bad in my whole entire life. I made my way around the house but it wasn’t without moaning, screaming and crying.”

Goforth’s daughter, Brandy, who lived about a quarter-mile away, brought over a walker once used by her husband after back surgery. It was the only way Goforth was convinced he could walk without the overwhelming pain. He took a few pain pills because in his estimation, “I was locked up so bad, that I couldn’t move.”

Goforth said the pain pills reduced his hurts to a bearable level. By Sunday, the pain increased and the comfort decreased.

“I kept telling my family I could handle it and get through this, showing how tough I was,” Goforth admitted. “About Sunday night … early Monday morning, I decided maybe I had better go to the hospital.”

Goforth laughs when he points out the Emergency Room staff took x-rays, prescribed arthritis medicine, and sent him home. Later on Monday he called a physician friend to describe his ailment.

He admitted he’d experienced hip pain over the years but nothing to this degree of discomfort before.

“We both figured it was arthritis, so he gave me a shot of cortisone in my hip and sent me home,” Goforth said. “He called me the next morning to see how I was doing. I told him I was about 50-percent better. He told me I’d be 50-percent better the next day and the day after I’d be back to normal. The next day I was worse.”

Instead of being 50-percent better, he was in twice as much pain and unable to stand by the middle of the night. The next day, in addition to his hip and leg pain, he added a crick in his neck to his list of growing ailments.

“I told my wife after a day of dealing with all of this – this was not a crick in my neck – something was bad wrong with me,” said Goforth.

Goforth spent a few days in the hospital with the doctor admittedly pumping more antibiotics in him than he’d ever prescribed to a patient. For all of the doctor’s efforts, it didn’t scratch the surface of taking away the pain.

The doctor then referred Goforth to the larger hospital in Tulsa for fear he’d not make it through the night.

Goforth spent a little over a week in the larger hospital, diagnosed with a form of staph infection, possibly from a splinter he’d “cut” out of his hand a few weeks earlier. Doctors believe it eventually led to the mysterious infection.

“They had to drill holes in my ankles and my hips and sent off the fluid to a lab for tests,” said Goforth. “They started gaining on the problem when I got there.”

The doctors sent Goforth home with an IV in his arm and required home health care.

“I was nailed down to the house with this IV that I had to have three times a day,” said Goforth. “But now I am off of the IV and the morphine. I’m back to doing halfway normal, or as normal as I was anyway.”

And now the kicker of it all, Goforth plans to race at the ADRL season-opener at the end of next month in Houston, Texas. He’s still walking with a cane and improving daily. This is a far cry from the condition where son Cary, the current ADRL champion, feared he was going to lose his dad to the dangerous yet mysterious disease.

“I had my wife take me down to the race shop where I told Cary I wanted to try and get in the car … well he had a fit,” admitted Goforth. “I told him I had to see if I could do it and if I couldn’t, I was just going to quit. I got in the car just fine but there was no clutch in it.”

The next day Cary had a clutch in the car and dad has been at the shop every day pushing it in.

“I just wanted to get my strength up and at least be able to push it in long enough for [friend and fellow competitor] Bob Bertsch to get staged,” Goforth said with a laugh. “It usually takes him a while. We’ll see how it goes.”

Goforth, 67, made it a point to let his doctor know he had every intention of driving again this season. He admits he’s a shell of his former self having shed 42 pounds throughout the ordeal.

“The doctor recommended I sit out for at least a year on ‘this race car business,” explained Goforth. “Me and my wife had been dropping hints with each visit and he’d ignore us every time. I just start laughing and reminded him that I’m 67 and if I tried to sit out one year, there ain’t no sense in me even trying to come back. I told him I was old enough to whether I should or shouldn’t. I will make the decision.”

In the unlikely chance he can’t make a go of it by Houston, noted Pro Stock Truck and Comp racer Brian “Lump” Self will be standing by with firesuit and helmet. And, according to Goforth, he faces the real likelihood the disease will eventually cause him to one day require hip replacement.

Goforth is not the least discouraged.

“We’ll have two cars regardless,” Goforth confirmed. “[Fellow racer] Pete Berner told me if I don’t come nobody probably will either. That’s the only reason, he said, they come is to see me. I have to tell you I have never been so impressed with our racing family who has stayed in touch and prayed for us.

“That tells me a lot about the people I race with.”

And it should tell Goforth just how confident they are to see a man who has defied life’s odds behind the wheel again.