The final hours of NASCAR icon Kyle Busch’s life were likely filled with chaos, confusion and a ticking clock that simply ran out of time, according to a prominent sports physician.
“He was going to have a fever, he’s going to be confused, he’s going to have significant low blood pressure, he’s not going to be able to communicate very clearly,” Dr. Jesse Morse, who did not personally treat the racing legend, speculated to Us Weekly on Thursday, May 28. “He’s going to be burning up because his immune system is not able to regulate this infection.”
Busch died at the age of 41 on May 21, after “becoming unresponsive” while training in a Chevrolet racing simulator. His cause of death was determined to be pneumonia that progressed into sepsis.
A death certificate exclusively obtained by Us on Wednesday, May 27, revealed that Busch eventually suffered hemorrhagic shock, which is caused by severe internal or external blood loss.
According to a 911 call, Busch was found on the floor “coughing up some blood” before being transported to a hospital in Charlotte.
“By the time they brought him into the E.R. and eventually evaluated him, I’m assuming they got X-rays of his chest,” Morse explained to Us exclusively. “They probably got a CAT scan of his whole body. They would probably check for neurological stuff just because he wasn’t with it, but then they probably found a significant raging pneumonia.”
Morse said that in cases where sepsis is detected, a “sepsis protocol” is then followed.
“The caveat is all this probably happened so fast that they didn’t have enough time to provide the correct antibiotics,” Morse detailed. “Sepsis is notorious for causing severe dehydration and you just don’t have enough blood in your body to maintain your heartbeat and [to keep] your heart pumping. That’s where you end up using a ton of fluids and antibiotics and something we call ‘pressers,’ which is basically a medicine that’s administered via IV in an ICU setting to keep your heart rate maintained. It’s literally done on a life-saving basis.”
He added, “Unfortunately, despite all of that, it wasn’t enough.”
According to Busch’s death certificate, he had been suffering from pneumonia for “days to weeks” before he died. Morse urged the tragic story to be a cautionary tale for others when it comes to being proactive about their health when experiencing symptoms.
The doctor noted, “If this can happen to him, where he raced and literally won the race five days before [his death], and then had an infection that was brewing and eventually caused him to die, hopefully people say, ‘I should probably get checked out.’”
