Mike Dunleavy is back in Indy and Bruno caught up with him after the team's shootaround on Tuesday. Nice to hear some optimism from Dun that he will be back and better than ever if all of the stages of rehab progress as expected. That remains a big if and just when he'll be back is still unknown, but so far so good.
"There really isn't (a timeline) at this point," he said. "It's just too hard to say. It's a long-range recovery so to pinpoint when I'll be back jogging, running, playing, all that stuff, it depends on the prior steps. Believe me, I want to know as bad as anybody else but they can't give me that. So I just have to take it week-by-week and month-by-month.
"The way things have gone through the surgery and the first three weeks, it can't be going any better right now. The full expectation is that I make a recovery and I'll be better than before I had the bone spur in there. But you just don't know how it's going to turn out."
The most interesting information came from Dunleavy's comments on the surgery itself. There's been plenty of amatuer speculation and criticism over the decision to wait so long before having surgery which could possibly jeopardize the start of next season. As it turns out, the surgeons were worried that the end result could be career-threatening, so no one was willing to rush into surgery.
Dunleavy, who took the bone spur home from the clinic, said doctors were "very concerned" about the risk the complex procedure posed to his career.
"If they weren't concerned, I would've had this done a long time ago," he said. "We just got down to a last resort where I couldn't play as it was so it was worth taking the risk."
Can't wait to see the bone spur necklace with one of Mike's jackets.