Brad Keselowski discloses infant daughter underwent life-saving surgery

Brad Keselowski’s newborn daughter required life-saving surgery in June, the 2012 Sprint Cup champion revealed in a blog post Wednesday.

Just weeks following her May 20 birth, Scarlett began experiencing difficulty breathing and wouldn’t eat. Keselowski and his girlfriend, Paige, took her to an ear, nose and throat specialist on June 16 where a doctor presented a “fatal diagnosis,” as Scarlett had a severe case of laryngomalacia, a weakness of larynx muscles.

“It’s fair to say that those hours were among the worst in my life and Paige’s,” Keselowski wrote. “As a parent, this was pretty much your worst nightmare. We went into full freak-out mode.”

Shortly after the diagnosis, Keselowski and Paige flew with Scarlett to Minnesota visited the Mayo Clinic. There doctors said, “Oh, yeah, she’s in a lot of trouble, but she doesn’t have what those doctors said she has,” but that Scarlett needed immediate surgery to resolve the laryngomalacia.

The surgery was a success and on Father’s Day, Keselowski and Paige took Scarlett home. That the chain of events occurred during a rare off weekend for NASCAR’s top division allowed Keselowski to focus exclusively on Scarlett and his family and nothing to do with racing.

“I am happy to report that Scarlett has recovered, and she’s doing well,” Keselowski wrote. “She’s gaining weight and breathing clearly, and doing all the things she should be doing, almost as though nothing was ever wrong.”

And when Keselowski won an Xfinity Series race three weeks after her surgery, Scarlett joined her dad in Kentucky Speedway’s Victory Lane.

“Just seeing Scarlett in her mother’s arms, smiling and healthy, was surreal and overwhelming,” Keselowski wrote. “I’d never had my personal and professional lives come together like that. It was something else.

“Being there, holding Scarlett -- it was the culmination of one of the most powerful experiences of my entire life. I honestly can’t think of anything to compare it to. It felt like its own victory. It really did.”