DorlandHealth

Confronting the Demands of Life in the Face of Traumatic Events

The news shattered the quiet veneer of the morning. In a hotel room on the oneiric grounds of Disneyworld, where she had spent the weekend with her four children, Lee Woodruff did not need to take a step away from the fables and the cartoon heroes for the blind hand of reality to steal its fingers toward her.

It came as a phone call from the president of ABC News. It was grim: her husband had been wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq. He was alive, but the extent of the damage was unknown. It was serious enough, however, that he was going into emergency surgery in Baghdad as they spoke. Serious enough that there could be no greater guarantee.

Kasey Edwards Combats the Loss of Limb

It was well past midnight when Kasey Edwards dove into the canal. A native of the region surrounding Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, the 18 year old knew that the waters of Nubbin Slough, a manmade channel that empties into the northeast side of the large body of freshwater, were home to some fearsome creatures — namely, the long and powerful alligators he had been familiar with since childhood. What he did not know, gathered together with a group of friends that night, was the lethal danger he would — literally — stare directly in the face.

Ten months removed from the harrowing events that took place in the early hours of June 22, 2008, Edwards is still learning. This time, though, it has less to do with survival than it does with adaptation. Without a left arm, the alligator-attack survivor and avid outdoorsman is continuing to master the use of an artificial limb. Through the benefit of Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, which provided and fitted him with his new appendage, along with the generosity of the nonprofit agency Inner Wheel, Edwards is living proof of a second chance, a walking testimony to the rapidly advancing frontier of new-age prosthetics.

Terror in the Night

Under the night sky, Edwards decided to swim a loop in the canal. While he was in the water, his friends on shore noticed something terribly wrong. With the sound of water splashing around him, the young man could not hear them urgently calling him back to shore. He did not see what they did — a ten-foot alligator cruising right toward him. Before he had a moment to feel the creature’s presence, he felt its jaws close on his left arm with an enormous exertion of pressure. And almost at once, he knew what was happening.