Johnny Robinson has absorbed, endured and otherwise navigated a form of rheumatoid arthritis in his spine that doctors once deemed “incurable,” thyroid cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a quadruple heart bypass and a severe stroke.
He figures the latter may have had something to do with all the “bright lights” he closed his eyes and willed away after jarring helmet contact back in the day with the Chiefs ... not that he has any complaints about something he considers self-induced, if it is because of that.
His speech can be halting at times now as he summons words, he hasn’t felt much in his lower right foot for years and there’s been a blood clot for a while in a heart that will always feel a void from the murder in 1985 of his son, Tommy.