Former NASCAR Cup Champion Kyle Busch dead at 41

[NWI_Irish96]

With Kyle Busch's cause of death reportedly being severe pneumonia that turned into sepsis the cause raises some big questions. Professional race car drivers have access to some better than average doctors and medical care. How did those doctors miss this? Or did Kyle Busch blow off the symptoms he was experiencing and refuse to let doctors examine him? How hard could it have been to just get a chest x-ray and/or do some blood work?

Pneumonia is nothing to mess around with. People don't just get over it like some ordinary bug. About 20 years ago I wound up with pneumonia after trying to self-medicate my way through a stubborn case of bronchitis that had been going on for more than two weeks. What made me finally go to the doctor was a coughing fit where each cough caused a hard, almost stabbing like pain in the back of my rib cage. The doctor took a chest x-ray. He could see one of my lungs was mostly full of infectious gunk. He said if I procrastinated just one more day I would have had to be hospitalized. I was in my late 30's then -almost Kyle Busch's age when he died. Funny thing: the shot of penicillin in the butt cheek, the Zythromax™ antibiotics and steroid z-pack he gave me had me feeling so much better just a day or two later.

I wish Kyle Busch had just gone through a bit of inconvenience to let the doctors really see what the hell was going on with him. If they could have diagnosed this stuff early Busch probably would have been back to 100% really quick and not miss any  racing time.

Most drivers will do anything they can not to miss a race due to injury, illness or other reasons.  Missing races has historically had huge negative points consequences during most of the history of NASCAR. 

One of Kyle Busch's Chase-era championships (2015) actually came during a year during which he missed a bunch of races (due to an injury) when a race win with a waiver got you in.  The current points format doesn't allow for a similar scenario to happen.

This shouldn't be on the driver. It's the driver's job to want to race through anything. It's the team's job to make the best decisions for the driver and the team. If the team was aware he had pneumonia and allowed him to continue, that's negligent. His family would have cause for a lawsuit. RCR wasn't winning a championship this year anyway. The reward was  extremely minimal compared to the risk.

[Bobby5280]

Doctors can do only so much, especially if their patient is trying to hide symptoms, lying about symptoms or just plain refusing to be examined.

Yeah, if the doctors had been able to examine Kyle Busch and missed diagnosing pneumonia that would be a big problem pointing to negligence or even malpractice. However, if Kyle Busch was telling everybody, "I'm fine," and refusing to get proper treatment (aka "just give me a shot") then that's 100% on him.

There are different varieties of pneumonia and people get affected by it in different ways. One person may be unable to get out of bed while another person has so-called "walking pneumonia." The person feels somewhat functional but still has an infection setting up in one or both lungs anyway. Either version is bad.