American Racing News Vol 1, Issue 2 Issue 8 | страница 35

swept across the nation as Robert
popped out of his car and was
able to exit under his own power.
But, first appearances aren't
always as they seem.
"I walked to the ambulance,"
Robert recalled. "I then went to
one hospital to get checked out,
then went to another hospital
before I was air-flighted to the
hospital in Stanford. The doctors
told me my pain was due to
whiplash, but the truth is that
when the back corner of the cage
hit the track, my head hit the dirt.
Nothing is going to withstand
your head hitting the dirt."
"In the end, I was told I needed
to wear a neck brace for eight
weeks, then I'd be fine and could
go back to racing," Robert added.
"That sounded almost too good
to be true to me. I was released
to my parents' house where I
slept for a week. At the end of
that week, I felt as good as I was
going to be, but I was still in a lot
of pain."

"I went to see Dr. David Schwartz
at OrthoIndy and he thought that
surgery should have been
performed six weeks earlier. I
didn't have surgery until seven
weeks after the crash. That
meant I had to start all over
again. Now, I'm going to be in a
cervical spine brace for the next
nine weeks."
In the moments following the
impact with the ground, the pain
was immediate for Robert. In
fact, his pinky and ring fingers
went numb and he lost 80
percent of the strength in his
hands. Strength that after two
months still hasn't returned to his
hands.
"I was diagnosed with a C2
fracture in my neck," Robert
states. "I had a burst fracture of
the C7. The bone actually
exploded! The doctors had to use
cadaver bone to create a new C7
vertebrae. On top of that, I had a
compression fracture of the T8
vertebrae."