May 1976 – Shrapnel Shock

In May of 1976 on our way home, after spending a couple of very hot days at a church camp retreat, Grandma, Grandpa, Kim, Gary, Robert, Kathy, Chris and I all stopped at the American River to enjoy cooling off in the water. Robert, being the adventurer he is, waded into the river in his bare feet to climb all over the rocks. In so doing, he stepped on a piece of glass causing his big toe to bleed profusely. Bandaging it up by using his T-Shirt he somehow managed to drive all the way home. About an hour after arriving home he started experiencing extreme chills.

He was so cold he went to bed and crawled under the covers to warm up. He was shaking and trembling so much, even curling up into a fetal position and piling covers on top of himself didn't help.

In spite of Robert thinking it was probably nothing, I became very worried and called the doctor. The doctor was quite concerned when I described Robert's condition. Since it was a Sunday night he told us to go immediately to the emergency room at the hospital.

After the doctor saw the cut in his toe from the glass and learned Robert had been playing volleyball in the heat of the day, he told us Robert had advanced to a dangerous level of shock brought on by the deep cut and extreme dehydration. He immediately gave Robert an antibiotic injection, properly took care of the cut in his big toe then sent him home with instructions to drink lots and lots of Gatorade, to rest, and to take antibiotics for the next two weeks. Happy to say he recovered fine.

This was my first experience with how a man will not admit there is anything wrong with him when there actually is! LIttle did I know how many more times since Robert's shrapnel shock, I would be experiencing this man-aberration! Read on.

August 1976 - HIT WITH SPINAL MENINGITIS

The bout Robert had with Meningitis happened a few months after his toe incident.
 
The first sign something was wrong was an extreme headache that would not quit and had lasted more than a day. That coupled with a temperature concerned me and, against Robert’s wishes, I drove him to the doctor. He looked awful, pale in color and was very weak. Yet he still would not admit something was seriously wrong with him. After the doctor examined him and came out to the waiting room to tell me what he suspected the diagnosis was, I was alarmed and quite scared. I had heard about people dying from Meningitis! Dr. Plutchok ordered a spinal tap for Robert and upon receiving confirmation that he indeed did have Meningitis he immediately put Robert into the hospital. In quarantine! The first phase of his blood test did not indicate what type of Meningitis he had—one type is contagious, the other is not. We were told it would take several days to find out.

For three days he was in isolation. Anyone who went in to see him had to wear protective clothing and masks and was required to scrub up. Visitors were limited to his parents, hospital staff and myself. When the tests finally came in indicating he did not have contagious Meningitis we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. Dr. Plutchok then told me he still had to stay in the hospital another week to get his strength back. I was at my wits end, I had run out of options and energy trying to deal with what to do with the kids..Even with all the help from Grandma and Grandpa It was hard for me to come down to visit when I didn't know for sure what to do with Chris and Kathy.

I pleaded with Dr. Plutchok to please let Robert go home. I promised I would take care of him and not let him off the sofa during the day, I would serve him meals in bed, whatever it took all the while knowing Robert does not like to sit still. Yes, I knew it would be a challenge. Dr. Plutchok sighed and said okay you can take him home. At home I worked very hard to keep my promise. Robert behaved. When he did start feeling better and wanted to go pick corn from his garden I made him take a chair to sit in while he harvested. It took him a good month before he really was back to being close to his old self. I continued to make sure he didn’t overdo it. Fortunately to this day he has shown no ill effects from his bout of Meningitis. I have always suspected the reason he got into trouble in the first place was because he was overdoing it and just totally ran himself down.That guy just doesn’t have an off switch when it comes to his yard, garden and his never-ending building projects.

1989 - San Andreas Earthquake Shake Up

When the quake of 89 hit I was working at the Napa Valley Register in the advertising department. Robert was in Los Angeles on a business trip. As a graphic artist working in the display ad department I was standing at the tall layout table making rubylith separations for a Macy’s ad. Suddenly the building moved. There was a low rumble. The building rocked. Looking up, startled, I could actually see the walls, lights, desks and ceiling move together in a wave-like swell. I became dizzy. The room was in an uproar of frightened voices of ooohs, announcements by the knowledgeable that it was an earthquake, yells directing people to dash under tables and desks. Within long seconds it was over. The phones started ringing. The CB in the news department came alive. Managers declared the workday over. Go home to your families we were told. I called home before leaving to see if Kathy was okay. She was home from school. She was quite frightened and told me the pool sloshed out a whole lot of water. She was okay. She was watching TV when the quake hit and was startled by the image buzzing off. She immediately went to stand in her bedroom doorframe. Good for her! Chris was still at school. By the time I was able to call to find him, the phone lines were tied up. Happily he arrived home safely shortly after I did and told us how much his classroom shook when the quake hit. The pool was still sloshing.
 
Robert was flying back home from Los Angeles that afternoon! I didn't know for sure what time his flight was due. I became fraught with fear. When I heard about the freeway collapsing all I could see in my mind was Robert right in the middle of it. I tried calling his motel in Los Angeles. I couldn’t get through. I called his office at Navelex on Mare Island to speak to his co-worker Dennis. Dennis and others in his office knew nothing. Robert did not come home that evening. I called Dennis again. Dennis told me he was able to find out Robert did check out of his motel. That was all he knew. I could not sleep that night. Why hadn’t I heard from Robert? Was he part of the carnage on the Bay Bridge or the freeway collapse? News reports continued to paint a dire picture, the injured and fatality counts kept climbing.
 
Although I was comforted by the fact Chris and Kathy were okay and there was no damage in our house I could not stop worrying. If Robert was okay why hadn’t he called?
 
It was hard to get up the next morning to go to work. My stomach was churning with fear. I was really thinking I had lost Robert. Mid morning, in the newsroom, a reporter yelled across the room to another reporter, “Rescue crews have just found a Napa man in the bridge wreckage. He didn’t make it.” My stomach jumped right out of my mouth. I nearly fainted. I told myself. "No it is not Robert. This isn’t the way I would find out." At this point though I was at the point of believing I had lost Robert. I went home for lunch and called Dennis again. Still nothing. I tried going back to work. It was useless to try to sit there and create ads. Too surreal. I left for the day.
 
Around 3:00 the phone rang. Although afraid to answer it for fear of bad news, I did so with much reluctance. It was Robert! He was still in Los Angeles! He never boarded his plane. He tried and tried to get hold of me. The lines were just too overloaded. He had gotten as far as the airport the day before and was about to board when the announcement came over the PA system that the Bay Bridge had collapsed because of the earthquake. He sat in the airport in disbelief as he and fellow waylaid passengers watched the morbid scenes on the TV monitors; scenes of devastation, collapsed freeways, fires and crews rescuing people. He said it was like being in a science fiction movie. Since all flights had been cancelled he had no choice but to find another motel for the night. He told me he would be flying back as soon as things cleared up.
 
I fell on the floor in relief. I will never, never forget the absolute fear that flowed through me thinking I had lost him when I heard that reporter yell across the room that morning. Although I always have believed Robert is the light of my life, that day it became extremely obvious to me how true he really is.

August 1991 - NEAR LOSS OF EYESIGHT

When Robert worked in a civilian position as an electronics engineer for the government he did a great deal of traveling. Often he would be gone a couple times a month on two or  three day trips, many of them on the East Coast. These trips usually involved going aboard aircraft ships because of his expertise in navigation systems. In fact, while working at Navelex, Mare Island in Vallejo, he had become the expert on TACAN systems. TACAN is a radar system, still in use today, aircraft ships use to track incoming planes. Robert knew more about them than anyone in the world and was a valuable asset to the Navy. Some trips lasted more than a few days, some lasted several weeks. If there was a major problem with a TACAN radar system or parts were delayed Robert was slated to be there until the radar systems were in good working order.

Of course there were also many meetings across the country wherein he was required to attend training seminars to keep up with on the latest developments in navigation and tracking systems.
 
One year, in 1991, on one such trip to Long Island, New York, for a three day conference, he ended up staying in New York for a month! This was only a training meeting so it had nothing to do with fixing a radar system. Instead it was himself who needed fixing. He almost lost the eyesight in one of his eyes.

At his very first meeting, he experienced an enveloping darkness around the outside of his left eye. He left the meeting and called me. He said he thought he should just fly home. I told him I would talk to our eye doctor first. When our eye doctor heard the symptoms, he told me to tell Robert to get himself to an eye doctor in Long Island immediately. Absolutely do not get on a plane. The altitude and air pressure would worsen the situation. Our eye doctor was sure, from the described symptoms, Robert was experiencing retinal detachment. In other words, the back of his eye was pulling away from the surface of his eyeball.

Robert returned to the meeting to announce he had an emergency and had been told to immediately get himself to an eye doctor. Fortunately one of the contractors in the meeting recommended his own eye doctor in the area. Turns out this eye doctor was one of the top eye surgeons in the country! This well known eye doctor agreed with the diagnosis our eye doctor had given and immediately admitted Robert to the hospital prescribing total bed rest. Robert was told he had to lay on his back and be as still as possible so as not to aggravate the detachment. He went into surgery that night, a surgery that lasted three hours, all the while with Robert wide awake as required for this type of surgery. The surgery was a success, his detachment situation was caught in time!

Why Robert had this "out of the blue" experience is not a true mystery. It very likely is a gene thing. His father experienced a detached

Robert’s father, who like Robert was very nearsighted, did a great deal of hunting when he was young so the speculation is that years of jarring his head from shooting his gun aggravated his detached retina condition. Medical technology was not as advanced in his day and he went through many surgeries and always had pain in his eyes. At one point he was blind for a couple of months because of complications; a blood vessel in the back of his eye had burst after one of his many operations.

Robert with his patch, New York motel room 1991

retina in both of his eyes. The likelihood of it happening in overly nearsighted people is very high. So Robert had two things going against him and possibly even a third element. A blow to the head, especially near the eyes, can bring on retinal detachment.

About two weeks before Robert had gone to the East Coast, we had a swimming party. The kids at the party were throwing water toys. Robert told me he was hit in the head really hard by one of these toys. A few days after that he began experiencing a large floater in his left eye but did not think anything about it.

The night before Robert was ready to be released from the hospital he called and said he needed me. I got on a plane the very next day and went to New York (the very first and only time I have ever been to New York) to spend a week with him. He definitely needed me, not only emotionally but physically for I had to drive him everywhere. He was worn out from the surgery and of course he couldn’t see very well having one eye covered. His eye doctor also told him to stay indoors away from outdoor light. When he did get up more strength we found a fabric store to purchase black fabric, thread, needle, elastic and scissors so I could make him a pirate eye patch. He had gotten quite tired dealing with a bandage over his eye. A few days later he was up to showing me some of New York so we ferried over to tour the Statue of Liberty. I was amazed how little she was. All the photos I have ever seen made her look so overpowering.

After a week’s stay Robert’s eye doctor gave us the bad news that Robert was not ready to fly on a plane, his eye was not healed enough to handle the altitude. I had my job at the newspaper so had to return home without him. It was another five days before he was able to fly home.

My entire trip out to New York and back plus food and lodging was covered by Robert’s work insurance. Robert’s boss was extremely attentive to making sure I was well taken care of. Because the incident happened while Robert was at a job meeting and because he was in a situation of duress Robert’s boss was able to push through the required paperwork. However the money for such didn’t come for awhile. It was Robert’s Mom who initially paid for my plane ticket up front!