Grandview coach rallied to beat coronavirus
The running joke, although it’s probably more of a flying one, is that Robert Dennis really is Superman’s grandson, more powerful than a locomotive.
The truth, of course, is more nuanced. Grandpa Walt Dennis did not descend upon this Earth in a rocket from the doomed planet of Krypton. But he was, as the legend goes, the physical model for Clark Kent in the late 1930s. When you stick a picture of a young Walt next to one of Joe Shuster’s old drawings, the resemblance is uncanny. Same round specs. Same square jaw.
This was back when Walt was, himself, a mild-mannered reporter. And a pen pal of Superman co-creators Shuster and Jerry Siegel, with whom the elder Dennis shared a love of science fiction.
“It’s funny, because you can look back at the original (Shuster) drawing and Robert’s grandfather and say, ‘Oh, wow, it still looks like him,’ ” says Suzanne Dennis, Robert’s wife.
“So that’s why the grandkids said, ‘Mom, Pop can’t die. He’s a real-life superhero. Superman doesn’t die.’ They now really think he’s a real-life superhero because he’s gone from death’s door to up and walking and talking again.”
*** Superman hasn’t been able to leap a building taller than a matchbox for more than a month. But he’s rallying. Slowly.
“Had a great day today,” Robert says. “In six minutes, I walked 60 yards.”
He smiles. On the last syllable, the voice trails away, the way an AM radio signal does in the middle of a summer night.
“Sorry,” he says softly. “Have to breathe.”
The Grandview assistant girls basketball coach is calling via Facetime from his bed at Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital, where he’s on the latest round of
a monthlong boxing match with the novel coronavirus. Robert’s paragraphs have gone from single to double spaced, but he’s leading on the judges’ scorecards.
Which is pretty good, considering that Dennis, 58, spent the first third of the match eating nothing but canvas.
“Literally, 10 days ago it took me an hour to walk 30 yards,” he says. “I’m making incredible progress. It’s just that it’s taken some time.”
Breath.
“I walked down and up nine stairs yesterday. That’s the first time I’ve tried nine stairs. Took me 40 minutes.”
Breath.
“They want me to get rid of the oxygen. I’m on two liters right now. I got down from three liters, and they want me to go down to one or none.”
Breath.
“So I’m learning how to sit up and catch my breath. And nobody thinks about breathing until your lungs don’t work.”
This from a man who’s run 30 marathons, whose daily joy is walking his two dogs out on the trail about a mile and a half from home.
COVID-19 doesn’t mess around. Or play favorites. The virus doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, urban or rural, if you lean red or blue, if you’re Von Miller or Robert Dennis.
He doesn’t know from where it came. Or how. Or why. The days just after the Wolves topped Valor Christian in the Class 5A semis on March 12 at the Coliseum, setting up a title game rematch with Cherry Creek, he felt fine. Robert walked all 18 holes at Meadow Hills on March 17 and 18. No issues.
Two days later, he had a temperature of 103.
He spent the weekend of the 21st and 22nd alternating between vomiting and diarrhea. His grandkids were staying with he and Suzanne in their Centennial home at the time, and Robert quarantined himself to his bedroom as his breathing became more labored.
“All I could think was, ‘If they catch this, it will kill them,’” he says. “And I couldn’t live with that.”
***
He’s thankful for the grandkids. For his three girls.
For the thoughts and tears of friends. For Josh Ulitzky, Grandview’s girls basketball coach, the Phil Jackson to Robert’s Tex Winter. For the staff at Overland High School, where he teaches social studies. For the ICU nurses and doctors at Sky Ridge Medical Center. For the therapy team at Spalding.
For Suzanne, after three decades, still his rock and his muse. Suzanne, who’d checked him into the ICU at Sky Ridge on March 26. The next day, he was intubated, followed by 13 days in a coma.
“I’m alive because of those doctors,” he says, “All those controversial drugs? I’ve had them all. None of them were working.”
After more than a week, they tried something that did: pronation. Doctors put Robert on his belly, and the fluid started draining out of his lungs. The appetite returned. Ice chips and popsicles tasted like pure nectar.
“Every day you’d turn the computer on or the television on and (read that) 10 more died overnight in Colorado,” Suzanne says. “His chance of survival, when they called, there wasn’t a number low enough to give me a survival chance. Watching these numbers go up exponentially, it’s hard to wrap your mind around anything positive.”
While Robert’s body fought back, Suzanne realized she’d contracted the virus herself. Grandma spent 18 days at home in self-quarantine, riding out the storm while wondering, praying, that her husband would do the same.
“You have no strength, you have no will,” she says. “You just feel so hopeless and helpless.”
Whenever she had to drop the rope, the kids stepped in to pick the thing back up again, to keep pulling. “I think that’s the toughest part on them, that when we were both sick, they were worried that they were going to lose us both,” Suzanne recalls. “How do you go from two (parents) to none, basically overnight? But they don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
***
They don’t have to worry about the occasional stogie, a treat that Robert saved for poker games with friends.
“Cigars,” one doctor scolded Suzanne, “are a thing of the past.”
“I hope you tell him that,” she replied.
“Oh, I’ll tell him. He’s got 99 percent lung damage. He has no capacity.”
Robert is doing at least 3.5 hours of rehab a day. An hour on re-learning the basics of dressing and bathing. Roughly 90 minutes of exercise. A half-hour or more of mental primers, word games, giving the brain a little jog.
“I’m still razor-sharp with numbers,” Robert says. “The words, that side of the brain, especially, it’s really good to slow down. That’s the biggest thing I’m coming out of rehab with, is to just slow down. ‘Where are you going? What’s the hurry?’
“I just went 90 miles per hour for 50 years. And then I just got hit by a bus.”
The numbers hurt. Robert is coming up on two weeks at Spalding. It’s been more than 40 days since he last held or hugged Suzanne, the love of his life.
“It’s hard as hell,” he says.
Breath.
“And guess what? I’m lucky. What about the people who don’t have the resources of the insurance or whatever, and they’re out there, just suffering and dying? I’m really lucky.”
Breath.
“Please. Six feet. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Everyone who didn’t make it has a family.”
Robert and Suzanne have five grandchildren. The oldest, Bralyn, who’s 12, “thinks Robert just hung the moon,” Suzanne says.
The pair Facetimed on Easter Sunday. Seeing Grandpa with the ventilator mask, taking those pauses to breathe, shook the boy up something fierce.
You never, ever forget the first time you see your father cry. Or the first time your heroes appear helpless and human. Bralyn hung up and wept.
“I just can’t stand to see him hurting like that,” he said to Suzanne.
“You don’t have to (talk),” she replied. “You don’t have to Facetime him anymore if you don’t want to. When he gets home, you can love on him all you want.”
Superman’s almost there. With enough love, enough caring hands, it’s amazing how far a man can fly.