His accidents had been extreme: his left leg had been blown off totally in the course of the explosion and being thrown from the car had given him fractures in virtually each bone in his physique. “Arms, chest, ribs, cranium; I used to be in a really dangerous method,” he says. Medical doctors put him in a medically induced coma to present his physique time to heal.
“As soon as I opened my eyes I knew one thing horrible had occurred,” he says. “However I additionally knew that not like a number of the troopers I’d transported in that helicopter, I used to be nonetheless alive. I clung to that and it has been my driving pressure day-after-day since – I’m alive and I’ve to profit from it.” Whereas most of his physique was underneath sheets and bandages, the one a part of himself that Robinson may see was his proper foot. “There have been solely a few toes left – there was a large lump on one aspect of my leg and I used to be in a pelvic brace.”
His medical crew defined that his proper leg wasn’t therapeutic appropriately. It might take a minimum of 18 months to 2 years earlier than he may stand on it, if he ever even may. As a substitute, they supplied an elective amputation. “Initially I believed ‘no likelihood! I wish to a minimum of attempt to get up, hop round, or kick a soccer with my son’, however as they defined the information I started to see it was hopeless, so I selected the amputation,” Robinson says. “I used to be completely satisfied to get issues getting in a optimistic route and begin getting on with my life.”
After being discharged from hospital, Robinson was despatched for bodily rehabilitation at RAF Headley Court docket. Train turned a lifeline and as a lifelong rugby fan, the wheelchair type of the sport was an apparent alternative. “I used sport as a approach to get my health again on monitor, but in addition as a software to assist me come to phrases with what had occurred,” Robinson says. “I might go to the health club as typically as I may and participate in any exercise that was supplied.”