For anyone out there who has climbed a mountain, you know one of the universal truths of all monumental tasks: A mountain always looks bigger when you’re standing at the base than it does from the summit.
But this rare breed of adventurer sees the world in a different way than the rest of us. When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, mountaineer George Mallory replied, “Because it’s there.”
That same sort of tenacity is present in Robin Sheppard, too. He needed every bit of it to come back from an extremely severe onset of Guillain-Barre syndrome.
Robin was on the way to his father’s house for a relaxing weekend when he started to feel unexpectedly tired. The cold that had plagued him for the last few days was finally catching up (isn’t that always the way things work out? You get sick on vacation). A quick breath of fresh air revived him, but the rest of the trip to his father’s house was at a snail’s pace.
Upon arrival, he decided to take a nap. A nap always helps. Unfortunately, when nature called a few hours later, he collapsed on the way to the bathroom. He couldn’t push himself into a sitting position or call out loud enough to be heard by his father. Fortunately, a neighbor came for a visit and heard Robin’s weak cries and summoned an ambulance.
He spent the next month in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He was unconscious for three days. His wife Suzi, played a key role in him awakening from this state. She insisted on immunoglobulin treatment when most of the doctors believed he had polio. Only one suggested treating for Guillain-Barre syndrome because time was a factor.
Robin had been a successful businessman, so he used his considerable wealth to get extra sessions of physical therapy. He attacked each session with a vengeance. When he learned to sit up, if only for a short period of time, he next set his sights on conquering the task of getting himself into a wheelchair.
When a specialist told him 10 weeks after he was hospitalized that he would never walk again, he saw this as more of a challenge than a prognosis. After several more months of grueling physical therapy, he learned to stand. Within years of the sudden onset of his Guillain-Barre, he was walking with only the aid of a cane.
George Mallory’s words must have been ringing in Robin Sheppard’s ears when he set out on his quest.
Read more from a newspaper article written several years ago about his harrowing story by clicking here.
