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.

“It was one of those times that you know exactly what’s happening, but you want it to be anything else except the reality of the situation,” Edwards says. “The sheer power and force I felt — I knew it couldn’t be anything else.”

He had happened to be swimming next to a line of buoys that stretched across the canal. He grabbed hold of the wire tightly. And he held on for his life.

“The alligator did a series of rolls trying to submerge me, but I held my grip on the line,” Edwards says.

Somehow the alligator had not been able to dislodge him. But while he escaped an almost certain death by maintaining his grasp, he soon felt the bone of his left arm break — and then, just like that, he was free. He started to swim toward shore, and while he was doing so he realized he was making a diagonal pattern in the water. He soon realized something else: he was cutting across the water diagonally because his left arm was almost completely gone.