Kim Robins takes a spill on the ice

She wasn’t on the rink in PyeongChang, but bluegrass singer, songwriter, and bandleader Kim Robins took a fall on the ice Saturday evening, and suffered a serious concussion when her head hit the ground. Kim says that the way she tumbled, her head took the full force of the blow, and she spent the night in the hospital near her home in Bloomington, IN. As you can see, Kim looks much happier in the photo above right than she does in the hospital wearing a neck brace. When we spoke with her this afternoon, Robins was back home recuperating, and said that she was feeling a bit better, but was still too dizzy to walk unassisted. She walked us through her whole ordeal… “My granddaughter had just moved back to Indiana from Texas, and we had talked all last week about going skating on Saturday. I’m not much of an ice skater, but I have been many times and know my way around. But I was staying close to the rail going around the rink. When I went to skate around this one girl who was holding on to the rail, my legs went out for under me and I went straight back and landed on my head. I was awake for a moment or so after the fall, but then I passed out. When I came to, my husband was trying to revive me with some ice to my face. Where I fell was on the far side of the rink, and the emergency crew took almost 45 minutes to get me in the ambulance. I had to lay there on that cold ice the whole time! At the hospital they did a CT scan, and neck and shoulder x-rays. They released me with a diagnosis of a grade 3 concussion, the worst you can get, but without any internal bleeding or skull fracture. The doctors say I will need at least two weeks before I can expect to be back to normal.” Though she works now as an inspector, Kim is also a registered nurse, so she knew right away that she had been seriously injured when she fell. And she says that a last minute decision may have saved her life. “Just as I was heading out, I grabbed a knit hat since it was getting colder. It was one that the dog had chewed up, but I took it anyway and sort of scrunched the weave back together so I could wear it. The doctor told me that if I hadn’t had that to cushion the blow, I would have surely cracked my skull, and could have died right there on the ice. My husband only came at the last minute as well. He works as a college basketball referee, and had just gotten home before we left. His face when I woke up showed how concerned he was. I knew it was bad.” While it doesn’t look like Kim will have to cancel any band shows, she will have to miss Leadership Bluegrass next week in Nashville. “I was so looking forward to going, but there’s no way I could drive down there next week. Fortunately, I spoke with Alan Tompkins at IBMA and they agreed to let me postpone my attendance until 2019. I’ve been in car accidents before, and this is still the worst thing I have ever experienced.” Kim has no shows booked until March 21, and she is planning on being in good shape next month. “I just hope I can remember lyrics by then!” Get well soon, Kim Robins!

Leave a comment