Formula 1: The GOAT

“Hello, I’m Dr. Isabella Conti, your son’s attending physician. Please come with me to my office for a detailed update on your son’s situation,” Isabella said in an Italian accent to Rümeysa, Güldane, and Ricky. They were standing in front of the large glass window of the Intensive Care Unit, having finally finished all of the emergency trauma treatment. Fatih had been moved there for close monitoring and specialized care.

The three of them nodded calmly before following the doctor to her room. They sat down, trying to be as calm as possible while preparing themselves for any news.

“Your son is stable. We’ve completed all the checks and treatments, and he is now resting in the ICU as we monitor him for the next few days.”

“After the initial scans, we discovered that he had sustained three injuries: a punctured lung, two broken ribs, with one of them being the cause of the lung puncture, and lastly, a broken hand.”

“For his punctured lung, since first aid was completed expertly, all we did was secure the vent and clean the area. We have also placed him on supplemental oxygen to speed up the process of his body reabsorbing the still-trapped air over several days. We will continue monitoring with a series of chest X-rays to ensure the air is clearing and the lung is staying inflated.”

“As for his rib injury, after a checkup, we determined that the fractures were non-displaced, which is a good thing. It doesn’t require us to do anything about correcting them. We will only focus on pain management, which will be done through a combination of medication and potentially a temporary nerve block if the pain is more than expected, to keep him comfortable. We will also make sure he coughs and takes deep breaths during this period to prevent lung infections like pneumonia.”

“And lastly, for his broken hand, the bone fragments are in good alignment. Since it is not displaced and is stable, we avoided any drastic actions and treated him by only placing it in a temporary splint before we eventually move to a cast to ensure the bone heals,” Isabella said, going through everything that Fatih had undergone for treatment in detail, unlike the previous debrief that was done in an urgent situation to receive their consent.

As they listened to her, with each report about his injuries and the treatments he had received, their anxiety and worries eased. By the end of it all, they were finally able to feel relief. Although it would have been better if he hadn’t been injured at all, if he had to be, it was in the best way possible, as it allowed for the minimal level of treatment for all the complications. All of them could have been worse and even required surgery.

“Wasn’t the rib the cause of the lung puncture? How did it come out as normal if it had bent enough to puncture the lung?” Rümeysa asked, worried that they might have misdiagnosed. Having a definitive answer would quell her worries.

“We were also surprised, but our hypothesis is that after the air was vented and the lung reinflated, it pushed the rib back into place. Moving him from a sitting to a laying position could also have done that,” Isabella answered, giving them reasonable possibilities. No one in the room could even imagine that Fatih’s sponge body was responsible, having taken the twenty-minute journey to the hospital to minimize the level of his injuries.

“So how long will his whole treatment process take before he is cleared to leave the hospital and return home?” Güldane asked.

“We will keep him in the ICU for four to seven days, depending on how his body reacts to the treatment. Then we will move him to the general ward for another four to ten days. It can take anywhere between ten to twenty days, or even longer if complications arise, which we will do our best to prevent,” answered Isabella.

“Sorry, can I ask something about him?” Ricky, who had come with them, asked Rümeysa for permission.

“You are not her husband?” Isabella asked, the color draining slightly from her face as she had just assumed Ricky was Rümeysa’s husband and had gone ahead with the patient discussion.

“Ah, I’m the owner of the team he races for, but she gave me permission to join the meeting,” Ricky explained briefly, knowing the potential problem.

“Whoo!” Isabella released a sigh of relief as she looked at Rümeysa, who nodded at Ricky, giving him permission to go ahead with his question.

“How long will it take before he can return to a go-kart and race? We need to adjust his schedule and send out updates to the organizers of the events he will not be participating in, and also to the WSK organization for them to release a press release, considering the event happened at a race they organized,” Ricky asked, before explaining himself to avoid any misunderstanding.

Upon hearing the question, both Rümeysa and Güldane tensed for a moment. They realized they now needed to prepare themselves for the possibility that Fatih might become afraid of racing as a result of the accident. Although they had been regretting letting him race moments after the accident, once they calmed down, they had decided to let Fatih be the one to make the decision. But if he wanted to stop due to fear of injury, it was not like they would be troubled that much, since Fatih himself was rich enough to live the rest of his life spending more than four million dollars a year and still not finish all the wealth he had managed to amass by the age of thirteen.

“Mmm…” Isabella took a moment to think, taking into consideration all of Fatih’s injuries before she said, “It will take anywhere between three to six months, depending on several factors. A pneumothorax typically resolves within a week, but the rib fractures will take significantly longer to heal, often 6 to 12 weeks. As for his hand, he will be in a cast or splint for an average of 6 to 8 weeks. After that, there is rehabilitation and strength training, which will start in conjunction with his mental health treatment. He will have been evaluated during his initial healing process to see if he needs it.

“The physical side will be about chest and hand exercises, like deep breathing to regain lung function and core strengthening to support the torso, since racing is very intense. For his hand, he will need to rebuild specific grip and fine motor strength while at the same time trying to regain his cardiovascular endurance and upper body strength, as the ICU stay and prolonged immobility will have led to significant muscle deconditioning. Only after that will he receive medical clearance to return to competition,” Isabella said, going into details, showing exactly why she was a doctor at the trauma hospital close to the La Conca race track.

….

“So, how long did it take you before you were cleared by the doctor in England to be fit for racing?” the reporter sitting behind the camera asked Fatih, who was done going through his experience following the crash and his healing journey that resulted from it.

The documentary team had been following him for nearly the whole duration, having even captured footage of him in the hospital all the way to him restarting his physical therapy before he was deemed fit to race again.

“Three months. That was the earliest I could convince my mom to have me be cleared by the doctor, as she was worried that my telling her that I’m fine wasn’t convincing enough, since the doctor had told her the minimum was three months. It also didn’t help that my initial doctor, Isabela, later discovered that the rib that had punctured my lung had happened before the second crash, which resulted in me not being trusted by mom when it came to matters related to me saying that I’m fine,” Fatih said, chuckling and diverting his eyes from the reporter midway as he mentioned being found to have hidden his rib injury.

The people in the room also chuckled at the anecdote, as it was very rare for someone to be able to hide the pain from a broken rib, and a child at that, before going back on the track to race for a few more laps like nothing happened. He would have even gone on to win the race had it not been for his devastating crash.

“So did you return to the track immediately after receiving the doctor’s clearance, and how were you welcomed upon your return?” the reporter asked when everyone else calmed down.

“It was good, as it was what I would consider a home race. During the three-month healing period, I had missed the entirety of the WSK Super Master Series, but thankfully returned for the opening round of the CIK-FIA European KZ/KZ2 Championship at the PFI International Kart Circuit in England. It was also quite a memorable day, since my friend was attending one of my races for the first time, so I was looking forward to it.”