Supercars driver Jack Perkins reveals shock health battle
Former Supercars driver Jack Perkins has opened up on his private battle to continue not just racing, but living, after suffering a stroke at the age of 29.
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Five years ago, Jack Perkins and James Courtney were discussing how they had ended their V8 endurance season without a win when it slipped out.
“I’ve been dealing with a lot of shit,” Perkins said. “I actually had a stroke earlier this year.”
Courtney went white. So did Perkins. The son of V8 legend Larry Perkins hadn’t planned on telling anybody about the stroke he had suffered aged just 29. Or about the heart surgery he subsequently had.
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Their winless season and the heartbreak of the penalty that cost them their Bathurst 1000 dream a few weeks before was suddenly put into perspective.
Now speaking about his previously unknown health fight for the first time, Perkins revealed he was hospitalised for 15 days after scans revealed he had a 1cm blood clot on his brain.
“I had to have heart surgery, too,” Perkins said.
“A metal plate was put on my heart to cover a hole they found while doing all the tests.”
It all began when he woke with a “paralysed” arm.
“I thought I had just slept on it funny. A dead arm,” Perkins said.
He did his best to ignore his non-functioning arm, dressing, eating breakfast and giving himself the first of his five daily insulin injections, after being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2006.
The Supercars driver then drove himself from his Richmond home to work at the Perkins Engineering workshop in Sunshine, where his only company were the cars that were being restored.
“But it wouldn’t go away,” Perkins said.
“I started worrying. I also wasn’t feeling well. I knew something was wrong but had no idea what. My mate’s wife is a nurse so I gave her a buzz.
“I told her what was going on and she didn’t really know. She said I should go to hospital.”
So Perkins jumped back in his car, a HSV Commodore of course, and used his good arm to drive himself 20km to the Epworth Hospital in Richmond for a series of tests.
“They didn’t really give me an indication of what was happening,” Perkins said.
“They seemed concerned, which was a worry, but told me to relax and wait for the results.”
But Perkins was worried. Arm still not working and in a hospital room, he was even more concerned after meeting the brain doctor.
“I wasn’t really familiar with what a neurologist was,” Perkins said.
“And he was really trying to understand if my hand was dead because I had slept on it or if it was a paralysis caused by something else. I had to explain the same thing to him three or four times with no idea why or what was about to come.”
The neurologist came back later that day. Not with questions but with answers.
“I was told that I had a significant blood clot on my brain,” Perkins said.
“They told me I had suffered a stroke.”
Perkins was all on his own when he received the shocking news. Only his mate’s wife knew he had taken himself to hospital.
“I remember thinking that was a bit shit,” Perkins said.
“I didn’t know a lot about it but there is a stigma around strokes. When they told me that I had definitely had a stroke and definitely had a blood clot that is when I got a bit upset. I was like: ‘What is this?’ I had heard bad stories about people getting loss of speech and having paralysed faces and all that stuff. I thought: ‘Shit, this is pretty serious’. It hit home.”
Perkins took a deep breath and composed himself before he called his father, the tough-as-teak Larry, a six-times Bathurst champion who drove alongside Peter Brock.
“I was pretty upset when I told him,” Perkins said. “I basically just told him that I had suffered a stroke. That I was in hospital with a blood clot on my brain.”
Not known for holding back his words, Larry was speechless.
“I think he was in shock,” Jack said. “Obviously you think it is serious when you hear the word stroke. I think he was pretty upset too, even though he is not one to show his emotion.”
Larry hung up the phone and soon arrived at the hospital with Jack’s mum, Raelene.
“He was quite upset as you would be,” Perkins said.
“It is not the type of thing you think would happen to a young person, especially your son. It was just tough to come to terms with but having Mum and Dad come in to visit was great.”
Jack spent the next 15 days in hospital fearing he would be struck down by another stroke, a bigger one, which could strip him of his ability to speak.
“It was quite a painful process because I felt like I was there for so long,” Perkins said.
“The big thing was trying to work out what caused a healthy and fit 29-year to have a stroke.”
There was an enormous amount of testing. One of those tests revealed another shock — a hole in his heart.
“A thing called a PFO,” Perkins said.
“It was quite large and may have contributed to the stroke.”
At 29, Perkins had both a stroke and heart surgery.
“Ultimately I ended up having a procedure on my heart where they chucked a big piece of metal in there to close the hole over,” Perkins said. “But I was OK with it. Coming from a background of when your car breaks down you fix it, I figured my heart was the same.”
The doctors concluded that the hole in his heart, hereditary high cholesterol and diabetes contributed to his stroke.
“So it was a matter of doing all I could to address those things,” Perkins said.
Which he did by way of steel plate, diet and making changes to his insulin injecting routine.
Bit by bit, Perkins regained the use of his arm. About 95 per cent. But naturally he had some concerns about his ability to drive a race car, which was not only his passion but his job.
He was also worried about how his employers may react should he tell them he had suffered a stroke.
In his second year of a contract with the famous Holden Racing Team, he was due to strap down as Courtney’s co-driver for three endurance events, beginning with the Sandown 500 which was scheduled to begin just 115 days after his stroke.
With so much on the line for the team, including a Bathurst 1000, Perkins feared they may replace him even if he was 100 per cent fit.
So he decided to keep his stroke a secret. He even created an alibi in case word got out after proving, at least to himself, that he was completely fit for his driving job.
“I didn’t tell the team,” Perkins said.
“If I felt like I wasn’t able to do the job then I would have certainly told them. I was racing in another category, in an Audi, which is a lot quicker than a Supercar and I got back in that car not that long after.
“I got through that and all went well. I ramped up my training and picked out a 10km fun run because if someone saw me in hospital, I wanted to squash any rumours by being off and running in fun runs and showing I was fit and healthy.”
Perkins took his secret into his Supercars season.
“By the time I strapped into a Supercar, which would have been for a practice session at Queensland Raceway or something like that, I was feeling more than capable of doing the job,” Perkins said.
“And I had no issues (during the three endurance events) not at all. I recovered and was OK to press on.”
And so he kept his incredible battle private until after the last race, a 10th place at the Gold Coast 600.
“I just told him (Courtney) that I had a bit of shit going on that year,” Perkins said.
“He couldn’t believe it. He was really surprised and was really supportive. And since then we have been able to get on the podium on the Gold Coast in 2018 and a Bathurst podium in 2019.”
But to this day, at least until sitting down for this interview, Courtney was one of no more than 10 people who knew about Perkins’ stroke.
“I have only told friends and close family,” Perkins said.
“I am a private person but at the start of the year I became aware of the Stroke Foundation and called them with an offer to help.
“I reached out to them and told them I had a story to tell and that is why I am telling it now. “Hopefully this helps raise awareness and highlights that it is something that just doesn’t happen to older people.”
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