My hospital and car photos

Let Me Introduce Myself

EXPAIN YOURSELF!

YOUR MIND and Your WILL can set you FREE.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Les Edwins, a recovered car accident victim. Did I recover overnight? No, not by any stretch of your imagination! It took me 6 long years to finally feel somewhat like myself again. Two and a half of those years I spent bedridden in the living room of my home. Six surgeries and 4 1/2 years later I was finally able to put a small amount of weight on my legs and walk with a cane. I was taking countless amounts of various pain medications, sleeping pills to try and sleep through the tremendous pain I endured, Muscle relaxers,  stool softeners, blood thinning shots in my stomach, Acupuncture on my whole body every day for a year, a therapist once a week to help me with range of motion, and the list goes on. Even through all the agony I kept a sane mind and positive outlook. When things didn't look like they were going to get any better, still.....I didn't give up. I was the most vulnerable I'd ever been in my life. I was 42 years old and my life changed in an instant. 

I'm sure by now you're asking.....what happened to change your life? You may be asking.....what happened to you that caused you so much pain? Your next question could be....why were you on so much pain medication? And lastly, you'd wanna know why it took me so long to recover?

Well let me tell you my story.....

December 9th, 2002 at 9am on a wet, drizzly day, I was rear ended on a bridge by another car traveling at a very high rate of speed. The impact was so hard that I was ejected out of my car 75 feet as my car rolled over several times. I ended up having both of my femurs broken in half, split my head open in the back and sustained a brain injury and multiple soft tissue injuries and skin abrasions. I was taken by ambulance to a trauma hospital where I was operated on for 20 hours. The next day, and for the next 4 1/2 years my life was a nightmare. I was checked out of the hospital a week later and laid in a hospital bed day in and day out in pain. When I speak of being in pain I am not speaking of "toothache pain" or an "aching pain"  it went beyond anything I had ever experienced before in my life. It is what I described to family and friends who asked as "Top Notch" pain. The kind of pain where you'd want to put a bullet in your head just to end it. There were days 

when I would ask God "why didn't you just take me in the car accident"? But I knew there had to be a reason.

 You see, I had actually died on the ground but came back. I remember very clearly a feeling I had never felt before. I was zooming through the air at a high rate of speed, a clear blue sky with puffs of white clouds passing by me. All I could think in this moment was how wonderful I felt, like some sort of rush I never had. Then out of nowhere....music......a symphony of violins playing the most beautiful song I had ever heard.  At that moment I just let go because I knew wherever I was going it had to be spectacular! Just as I let this feeling take over me, my father came to me. My father Chuck "Pops" Edwards had passed a year before my accident. I only saw his face. He was smiling at me and saying "hey son, what you doing on the ground? Get up, you'll be alright". My girlfriend at the time, "Leigh Ann Lombardo," had also lost her father, Uncle and cousin the year before and all three of them came to me as well. Leigh Ann's father Frank Lombardo spoke to me as well and said in a sort of jokingly voice, "yeah Les, get up, Leigh Ann's waiting for you". The other two, her Uncle Gary Lombardo and cousin Dominic Mutulo didn't say anything but they both were smiling. At that very moment I opened my eyes and I remember a man who I didn't know then but know now, was a citizen who was saying a prayer over me. I asked the man what happened to me and he said I was in a car accident. I remember my face was covered with blood as was my clothes and I tried to move but couldn't. The man said to me, "don't move, your legs are broken". I was lying on my right side and I looked down to my feet and both of my feet were pointing the opposite way, backwards. I'm a drummer by profession and I recall telling myself, "Oh man, I can't play drums now"!  Off to the trauma hospital I went. I later learned that it was a police officer who hit me and the police department was trying to say they were chasing me but then changed their story because they had no record of it. Not to mention, they even wanted to make the accident 50% my fault. Now, I have a lot of respect for the men and women serving as police officers to protect our communities, but this particular police department tried every way possible to find some kind of fault on my part, even saying in the papers that I had swerved in front of the police car as it sped from behind. I will tell you, it happened so fast that I didn't even know what hit me. I think we can all agree that when you "hit" someone from behind it's ALL your fault, but I guess not for police who rear end you.

There is so much more to this story, but what I want you to know is I created this blog for those who are suffering with pain related to accidents, illness, ect. And because so many people who I have met that have pain have asked me how did I deal with it as long as I did and still do. I thought it be best to develop this blog where you can write to me if you are having a hard time coping with your pain and I can hopefully help you through some of it the way I did for myself. Lets talk. Lets keep your spirits up! Lets get you back to living life... I am.

Les Edwins