From catastrophe to recovery - Pascal Lepine's story in his own words

Pascal Lepine

Chris Davis

"I will stand, and I will sit, I have to try to keep moving," said Pincher Creek's Pascal Lepine at the beginning of his talk to the local Rotary club at their Thursday November 27 luncheon.* He elected to sit for his talk, and the mere fact that he had a choice is part of the present miracle of his life. That he could walk to a chair and sit. While camping with his family in the forestry last July, a 30 foot poplar tree collapsed on him, breaking his spine instantly, pinning him to a flaming barbeque (which ultimately did not burn him).  His expectations of first surviving the experience and then ever again walking looked slim.  Here's his story in his own words.


Pascal has five children, two girls and three boys.  "The boys are fine, the girls are trouble makers."  He has a wife that loves him, Kelly, who is a constant volunteering figure for hockey, soccer, cadets, and other things.   "I think she is on every possible board there is," said Pascal.  He coached hockey here for two or three seasons as well.  Pascal and Kelly moved the family to Pincher Creek about five years ago.

"On July 24, here, we decided to go for a camping trip," he told Rotary. "It was to last one week, in the forestry reserve close to the Riviere family."

When they arrived at the campsite "The winds were starting to pick up a bit, but it wasn't too bad." The family set up the trailer and got settled in. "We were sitting around the fire, and the winds were getting worse and worse, so we decided to send the kids in."

Pascal started to prepare supper on the barbeque.

"I went out to check on the hamburgers, and they were not quite ready.  For some reason I had some garbage in my hand that I had to dispose of, so I walked up to the fire pit, and  I leaned over to throw in the garbage."

"I was standing where all the kids would have been sitting," he said, emotions overcoming him.  "I got hit by something, at that point in time I didn't know what it was."

"My first thought was who the **** hit me?  I felt like I got hit in the back of the head by a sledgehammer.  I started looking around, and I was stuck on top of the fire pit, with the fire going, and my legs were... where they shouldn't be.  In positions they shouldn't be.  My trunk, my upper body was kind of compressed, and twisted.  I knew that it wasn't good.  I could hardly breathe."

What had hit Pascal was a 30' poplar tree.  "It got uprooted and came down and smacked me in the back.  It never hit me on the head, because I was never unconscious.  Mainly, leaning over to throw away that garbage may have saved my life, because it didn't hit me on the head.   It hit me across my shoulder and came across my back."

"Thankfully the family friends that I went out with, he is a pit foreman at one of the coal mines, and he happens to be a Rescue captain, as well.  His wife was outside, he was inside with the kids, in the trailer.

"It seemed like an eternity that nobody was coming to help out.  Finally, she came running and she tried to take the tree off of me."

"Greg Plummer and the Plummer family, came out and got the tree off of me, and asked me if I could move off of the fire pit."

"I couldn't feel nothing, from the neck down, and could hardly breathe.  Greg got my upper body off the fire, and stabilized my back.  He asked me if I could  get my legs off the fire pit."  He said that the fire pit was approximately 6 feet across with a metal grate.

"I had to say 'No, I can't feel nothing, I can't do it.'  His wife took my legs off of the fire pit."

"The only thing I could think of was my wife. Finally, it felt like ten minutes went by, she comes out, and she is aggravated because it took so long for her burger to cook.  She had no idea of what had happened, and this happened five feet away from our trailer. Even with all the screaming going on, the winds were howling  she didn't hear anything.

"I have never seen her not be able to handle something, but she didn't handle that one very well.   She went into shock, obviously.  They asked her to put out the fire, because at this point in time, I am still inside the fire.  A 10,15 gallon jug not ten feet from the fire.  Instead of taking the jug and dumping it on the fire, she took them in dixie cups.  Dixie cup after dixie cup on the fire.

No one was willing to change the way she was handling the situation. Months later Greg said to Pascale 'We weren't going to tell her to pick up the jug and dump it on the fire.  She was busy, and she was fine with what she was doing.'  I don't know if she got the fire out."  His legs were gouged  from the edges of the metal, but Pascal had no burns.

"Greg got my back stabilized, and got on the phone and called 911."  Due to the issues of trying to describe where they were within the forestry reserve, Greg asked repeatedly to be transferred to an operator in the Pincher Creek area.  He was routed from Calgary, to Lethbridge to Pincher Creek.  "It seemed like an eternity, but obviously it wasn't, it was about 20 minutes. It is a 35, 40 minute drive to where we were.  It took about 20 minutes for the ambulance to show up.

"They did what they had to do, got me on a backboard,put me in the ambulance, took me to Pincher Creek Hospital.   Pincher Creek Hospital did every possible test that they could, and soon realized my spine was broken.  It was T11, T12, L1, L2.  At this point in time, I have feeling back in my upper extremities, but I can't move my legs and I can't really feel them.  I can't really explain it, I can't really feel them, but they are burning.  It feels like someone is running a cheese grater over my legs.

"They realize my spine is broken, and they have to inform my wife and I that we have to go to Calgary, and they are getting STARS right away. 'YES! I'm going in a helicopter!'   That turned out disappointing.  The winds were too high, and STARS decided they could not.  So I had to go for a 2 hour ambulance ride to the Foothills hospital."

"To this day I have never really asked the surgeons, but I keep wondering to myself - 'It took three days before they decided to do surgery.  Daily, every half-hour it felt like for those three days I had a team of medical staff, surgeons, nurses come in with safety pins and q-tips and they would poke me."  They would ask if he could feel either one, of if he could distinguish between the two.  At one point during one of these sessions, Pascal's 23 year old son was in the room with him.  "It got so bad, they would poke me with a safety pin, and I would bleed, but I wouldn't know."

When it was time for the 7 hour surgery "They put a team of five surgeons together, it was 13 or 14, the complete team.  I woke up at around 8:00 am, and they came in and said that they were going to do surgery. What was happening was my T11 was trying to come right out of my back, and my L1 was pressing against my spinal cord, and trying to cut my spinal cord.  Luckily, it didn't.  That's why I couldn't feel my legs.  They drew everything out, and explained what they were going to do. What they ended up doing is they installed two titanium rods, I guess they are about 4" long, on each side of my spine, and there are three brackets, and six screws going into my spine.  They straightened everything back out, and took the pressure off of the spinal cord."

"I have no idea how spinal cords work, but the way it was explained to me is that there is a sack that goes over the spinal cord and that was damaged as well.  They had to repair that."

"They were talking to my wife, telling my wife that the chances of me walking again would be very minuscule. I had to get used to the idea, mentally, of wheeling around town, being the rest of my life in a wheelchair. However, my wife never let me know this. She dealt with this.  She is a real trooper and deserves a medal for all this.  This community deserves a medal, not me.  My wife took it upon herself to suck all the negative right out of my room, right out of my life, and let me focus on recovery.  For the following two to three weeks, upwards of a month perhaps, I had no control of my bowel, my gall bladder, my legs were not moving."

They had to use a medical hoist to move Pascal off the bed into a wheelchair where he could be pushed.  "The hardest part for me was 'How was I going to be a father to my kids, not being able to move, to do what I used to be able to do?'  I went two weeks without seeing my daughter.  When she came in, she put an end to everything negative I had in my mind.  The first thing she said when she came into the room was 'Dad, can go on a ride with you in your new vehicle?'."

"She didn't care one way of another whether I walked  ever again.  All she cared about was that I was still here, and I was going to still be able to put her to bed,  and do whatever we used to do, just in a different form, perhaps.  From that point, all the negative was out of my mind."

Three weeks to a month after his accident while he was being tested again with the needle and the q-tip a miracle occurred. "I felt it.  My foot, then about halfway up my calf I could feel it."

"They weren't sure I could feel it.  They told me 'You can't look'."  They did the test again with Pascal looking at the ceiling.  It was true.  "The feelings were coming back."

"From that point it happened so fast.  I got feelings back to my knee, I got movement back in my ankle, then from my knee down I could start movements, slightly."  He said it took about 4 days after those original feelings to regain some feeling in his hips, bladder, and bowel.  "They came back as well.  Before I knew it I was in rehab at the Foothills Hospital.  Originally they said they were going to try their best to get me home for Christmas.  From Christmas, it dropped to November 15.  Well, I was home October 3, I think it was, full time."

Pascal has been doing physiotherapy three times a week, and has recently signed up to do pool therapy.

"Nobody is saying anymore how far I will come along, because it appears whatever they have said so far has not worked out for them.  They are not against, me, it appears.  It is a matter of working hard and keep going."

"I really, really, really felt that our family was finally adopted by Pincher Creek."

"I would not entertain the idea of moving away from Pincher Creek.  All the support we have had, from people dropping meals off to my kids while I was in the hospital, while my wife was by my side, people babysitting our youngest, our 6 year old, donations, gift certificates, pizzas..."

Before the accident the family was halfway through renovating the house.  Without knowing whether the house would have to be configured to wheelchair friendly, the renovations could not continue, leaving the limbo of a half renovated home.  "Obviously, it has come to a halt.  Angels Within Us has stepped in, and they are going to completely finish everything that I started."

"All the negative, and all the stress has been lifted off of our family and they have left it in our hands to focus on rehab, and recovery, and getting better.  That is what this whole community has done, and I thank you all, because in some way, shape, or form, I feel that you have had a hand in bring me, and my family as far as we have come.  Really.  Thank you very much."

*date corrected