Almost Gone: A Journey of Survival and Resilience
Updated: Sep 4
There are moments in life that divide everything into two parts:
Before and after.
For me, one of those moments was a near-fatal medical crisis that left me in a coma for approximately three and a half weeks.
But my story didn't begin in a hospital bed.
And it didn't end when I woke up.
Almost Gone: A True Story of Survival, Coma, and a Second Chance is the story of the life that came before, the crisis that nearly ended it, and the long journey of survival and resilience that followed.
For years, much of that story remained private.
Eventually, I realized it was time to tell it.
The Life Before Almost Gone
Before everything changed, I had already lived a full life.
I grew up in Kentucky around my family's restaurant, where I learned about hard work at an early age.
I served in the U.S. Navy Seabees.
I became a husband and father.
I built a career.
I ran businesses.
I bought a home.
I bowled competitively.
I experienced successes, failures, friendships, family milestones, and all the ordinary things that make up a life.
That's why the expanded 2026 edition of Almost Gone doesn't begin with my medical crisis.
I wanted readers to know who I was before I became the man lying unconscious in a hospital.
Because none of us should be defined entirely by the worst moment of our lives.
When Pain Changed Everything
Pain eventually became part of my story.
So did prescription medication.
Over time, my medication use escalated into dependence.
Looking backward, I can see warning signs more clearly than I could while I was living through them.
There were circumstances I believe deserved more attention.
There were also choices that belonged to me.
That distinction matters.
One of the lessons I've learned is that accountability doesn't require pretending outside circumstances don't exist.
And recognizing outside circumstances doesn't eliminate personal responsibility.
Both can be true.
That understanding became an important part of my recovery—and an important part of the story I eventually chose to tell.
The Night My Life Nearly Ended
Eventually, everything reached a crisis point.
My mother became worried when she couldn't reach me.
My daughter Cynthia and my former brother-in-law Steve went looking for me.
They found me unresponsive.
Cynthia called 911.
What happened next comes largely from what my family and others later told me because I don't remember it myself.
At one point, there was only a tiny sign of life—a faint pulse detected in my right foot.
I was transported to St. Joseph's Hospital.
Then came approximately three and a half weeks that are missing from my memory.
I was in a coma.
My family waited.
And somehow, I survived.
Waking Up Wasn't the Ending
You might think waking from a coma would feel like reaching the end of a terrible story.
For me, it was the beginning of another one.
My body had been through tremendous trauma.
My left side had been severely affected.
There were wounds and medical complications.
Things I once did automatically suddenly required effort.
Eventually, I spent about eight weeks in rehabilitation at the VA.
I had to work toward regaining abilities and independence.
Recovery wasn't dramatic.
It was repetitive.
Try.
Struggle.
Try again.
Make a little progress.
Come back tomorrow.
That's where I began discovering what resilience really meant.
Resilience Isn't Being Unbreakable
Before my medical crisis, I probably thought resilience meant being tough enough that life couldn't break you.
I don't believe that anymore.
Life can break things.
Health.
Plans.
Confidence.
Independence.
Relationships.
The future you assumed you were going to have.
Resilience isn't pretending none of that happened.
Resilience is deciding what you're going to do afterward.
For me, that meant learning how to live in a changed body.
It meant accepting help.
It meant working toward independence.
It meant facing my own decisions honestly.
And it meant learning that my life could still have value even if it didn't look exactly the way it had before.
The People Who Helped Me Back
No one rebuilds completely alone.
My family was part of my story before the crisis, during it, and after it.
My daughter had experienced something no child should have to experience—finding her father unresponsive and calling for help.
My mother knew something was wrong.
My family waited while I was unconscious.
Friends showed up during recovery.
Healthcare and rehabilitation professionals helped me regain function.
Different people played different roles.
They couldn't do the work for me.
But they reminded me that I still had something worth working for.
Recovery taught me that accepting support isn't the opposite of strength.
Sometimes it's part of strength.
Faith and the Meaning of Another Chance
There's a question I may never be able to answer:
Why did I survive?
I don't know.
I don't claim to understand why one person survives a catastrophic medical event while another doesn't.
But I believe I was given a second chance.
Faith became part of how I understood that chance.
It didn't erase what happened.
It didn't make rehabilitation easy.
It didn't remove the consequences of my decisions.
It didn't replace appropriate medical care.
What faith gave me was a reason to believe there was still purpose ahead.
Instead of spending the rest of my life only asking why I survived, I began asking:
What am I going to do with the life I still have?
Returning to the World
Eventually, recovery had to become something more than rehabilitation.
I had to live.
Return to work.
Handle responsibilities.
Spend time with family.
Adapt to physical limitations.
Solve ordinary problems.
Make decisions.
Build a life around the person I had become.
That may not sound as dramatic as surviving a coma.
But in some ways, it was the most important part.
The goal wasn't simply to remain alive.
The goal was to live again.
Why I Finally Wrote Almost Gone
For a long time, I wasn't sure I wanted to tell this story publicly.
Writing it meant going back into parts of my life I would have preferred to leave behind.
It meant remembering mistakes.
It meant asking uncomfortable questions.
It meant looking honestly at decisions I made and consequences I couldn't change.
But eventually I realized something:
My story might be useful to someone else.
Maybe someone will recognize a warning sign sooner than I did.
Maybe someone recovering from a medical crisis will realize that slow progress is still progress.
Maybe a family member will understand that they're not alone in what they're experiencing.
Maybe someone whose life has changed permanently will realize that different doesn't necessarily mean finished.
And maybe someone who believes they've ruined too much of their life will understand that another chapter can still be written.
That's why I wrote the book.
Why the 2026 Edition Goes Deeper
The expanded 2026 edition gave me an opportunity to tell more than the crisis.
I wanted readers to understand where I came from.
My Kentucky upbringing.
My family.
The restaurant that helped raise me.
My Navy service.
My career.
Business.
Fatherhood.
Friendships.
The successes and mistakes that shaped me.
Then the pain.
Prescription medication dependence.
The crisis.
The coma.
Rehabilitation.
Faith.
And the second chance.
Those pieces matter because Almost Gone isn't simply a story about nearly dying.
It's the story of a life.
Finding Purpose in What Happened
I can't change what happened to me.
I can't rewrite the choices I made.
I can't recover every physical ability exactly as it existed before.
But I can decide what I do with the experience.
Writing became part of that.
Sharing my story became part of that.
Talking about medication awareness, personal responsibility, recovery, family, faith, and second chances became part of that.
I don't have every answer.
I'm not trying to give readers medical advice.
I'm telling them what happened to me and what I learned from it.
Sometimes another person's experience gives us a reason to examine our own lives differently.
If Almost Gone does that for even one reader, telling the story was worthwhile.
A Journey of Survival and Resilience
Today, resilience means something very different to me than it once did.
It's not about never falling.
It's getting back up.
It's not about never needing help.
It's knowing when to accept it.
It's not about pretending you didn't make mistakes.
It's learning from them.
It's not about returning to exactly who you used to be.
It's building something meaningful from who you are now.
And it's not about having every answer.
Sometimes it's simply having enough faith to take the next step.
The Second Chance
My life could have ended during that medical crisis.
Instead, there was a tiny pulse.
Then there was another day.
Then another.
Those days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
Months became years.
Eventually, those years became a story I was finally ready to tell.
That's Almost Gone.
It's not a story about being invincible.
It's a story about being human.
Making mistakes.
Facing consequences.
Accepting help.
Finding faith.
Rebuilding.
And realizing how much an ordinary day is worth after you nearly lose every one you had left.
I was almost gone.
But my story wasn't over.
And every day since has been part of the second chance.
— Robert B. Routt
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