ST. PETERSBURG, FL Mar 26, 2010-Team Director Larry Foyt will be calling the shots this weekend for the ABC Supply team at the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg while his father A.J. Foyt recovers from a procedure to insert a stent in his main artery Friday. Doctors had discovered a more than 95% blockage in the artery after an angiogram was performed on Monday.
"It was touch and go according to Dr. Civitello," Foyt said last evening after the procedure. "They had a full surgical team on board with the surgeon [Dr. O.H. Frazier, an internationally renowned heart surgeon who trained under Dr. Denton Cooley] who did my wife Lucy's triple bypass, prepared to do a bypass if the stent didn't work. Their challenge was that they had to go through several stents first to get to the blockage and then get the artery opened enough to take the stent. I watched on the machine while they did it. After what seemed an awful long time, my doctor stepped back and said 'We got it A.J.' I can't tell you how happy and relieved I was. I think he was too."
Foyt, in his typical no-holds-barred style, spent the previous weekend working on his track hoe at his ranch in Del Rio much to his doctors' dismay. "Well, I had some things I wanted to get finished in case I was laid up for a while," Foyt explained.
Foyt is expected to be released from the hospital later today with strict orders to "take it easy for the next three or four days."
