Matt Tifft, the Joe Gibbs Racing development driver out indefinitely after brain surgery to remove a low-grade tumor, has posted another video update to Twitter more than a week after the procedure.
Tifft, 20, says he received the lab results yesterday on what was removed from his brain on July 1, which turned out to be a grade two low-grade tumor.
Tifft says the results showed the tumor could have taken on a “nasty form” in 15 to 20 years if it wasn’t found or treated. The tumor was originally found when Tifft was being examined for a back injury.
“We knew going into this process there was a 95 percent chance this was a tumor and five percent chance that it wasn’t,” Tifft says in the video. “But obviously those are odds you don’t want to take a risk with.”
UPDATE: Recovery/lab results. Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/2oaLLU5Ayg
— Matt Tifft (@matt_tifft) July 10, 2016
Tifft continues, “Extremely lucky that we caught it when we did with the back injury and everything. That was definitely something I might not have made it through.
Tifft says at the beginning of the week he was taking between 20-25 pills a day, a combination of treatments for swelling from the surgery and anti-seizure medicine. Tifft added “I’m almost all off that now.”
The native of Hinckley, Ohio, is in “recovery mode” now but added he will now look at chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
“We’ll keep learning with that, that’s a full week of that,” Tifft said. “Starting to feel like a normal human again. Finally able to go on car rides and leave the house and stuff like that.”
Tifft has competed in six Xfinity Series races for JGR and JGL Racing and in three Camping World Truck Series races for Red Horse Racing. In May, Tifft was announced as one of 11 members of NASCAR Next, a program that highlights young up and coming drivers in the ranks of NASCAR.