Indianapolis 500 legend A.J. Foyt underwent surgery on Wednesday to implant an artificial knee in his right leg; replacing the antibiotic-infused cement spacer he received August 10th. It was the second phase of treatment for a staph infection that surfaced in the 80-year-old Foyt's artificial knee in late July.
"My doctors said everything went perfectly, so I was relieved to hear that," Foyt said. "My right leg was clear of the infection so the doctors were able to give me a new knee. They were really pleased with how everything went."
It is the second time that Foyt has been hospitalized with a staph infection, the first time occurred in January 2012 in his left artificial knee. Foyt is expected to remain in the Houston hospital for several days.
Earlier this year, Foyt had an extensive recovery from complications from heart surgery last November in Houston, Texas.
There isn't much Foyt hasn't overcome in his legendary life from an attack by killer bees in 2005, to an overturned bulldozer that left him submerged underwater on his ranch in Waller, Texas in 2007.
Trips to the hospital are not unusual to Foyt, who has had a number of stays in various Houston hospitals in recent years, most of which were related to injuries stemming from his 1990 Indy car accident at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
In 2013, Foyt underwent back surgery and had his left hip and right knee replaced in separate surgeries, and in 2012, he battled back from a life-threatening staph infection after surgery to remove bone spurs in his artificial left knee, which had been replaced in 2006.
Back in 2005 on his ranch outside of Houston he nearly became the victim of one when he was stung over 200 times by Africanized killer bees while bulldozing his property. He dug up a colony of the deadly bees, unleashing a fury that the then 70-year-old Foyt called the "scariest thing he's ever been involved in."
The agriculture department of Texas A&M University had to be called in to exterminate the killer bees, estimated at over 60,000.
"It's the first time I've been in a situation where I didn't know what to do or how to get out of it," Foyt said at the time. "I've done all the clearing on my ranch all my life. I was a little bit skeptical of what could be there - ground hornets or whatever - but I didn't expect a breeding colony of bees."
Foyt said 161 bee stingers were pulled out of his face and lips alone, not counting the bee stings on his arm. He still has some of the scars on his arm but refused to go to the hospital after the paramedics gave him a shot of Dramamine.
He called the experience with killer bees was the "spookiest thing I've ever been in."
After repeatedly being stung, Foyt began to run towards a swamp on his property but fell down. The bees continued to sting and he ran again and the bees put him back on the ground. Foyt thought he would die on the ground.
"I fell off the bulldozer and left that thing run," Foyt recalled back in 2005. "There was a big cloud of them like you see in the movies. The second time, I don't know what gave me the willpower to get up but I made it to the swamp, fell into the mud and just laid there with my head in the mud until they went away.
"I've been stung before and it's an experience I don't ever want to go through again."
An old piece of oak tree on Foyt's property provided a breeding ground of the Africanized bees, which have migrated from South America over the decades.
The bee stings likely would have killed most people, but the bulky Foyt didn't go down easily.
Foyt, who has a legendary appetite, and often puts salt and pepper on cubes of butter at restaurants and eats them as an appetizer, was asked if he still ate honey after the bee episode.
"(Heck), these bees don't produce honey," Foyt said. "If they had produced some honey that might have been a different story."
