My name is Bill Lundstrom and on August 18, 2002, I was involved in a motorcycle accident that left me paralyzed from the chest down. This is my story.

I can only remember the ride up to Julian.  Because of the trauma my brain and body experienced, I don't remember much of the day of my accident or most of my hospital stay.  Nearly all of what I know is through my friends and family.  My first memory after the accident was that Bob and Jim, my counterparts in this journey were playing Playstation.

I was riding my TL1000R from Julian toward Ramona (that is in rural San Diego) when a truck pulled out in front of me and hit me head on.  I went over the handle bars and hit the roof of the truck with my helmeted head, my body following close behind (in essence, a human javelin).  I was hurt VERY badly.  My friend Jim, who was with me called 911 and I was flown by Mercy Air (our local air ambulance helicopter) to Palomar Trauma center.  I can tell you that I had multiple lacerations to my forehead, a broken back at T-7 and a collapsed left lung.  They did the usual Trauma Center/Emergency Department rotation where I got x-rays, a chest tube, neck brace and steroids for the spinal injury and then went upstairs to the ICU. 

The ICU is where things got interesting.  My first night I suffered a stroke from the head injury which caused me to lose movement of my right arm.  I also had trouble speaking. Along with the stroke I started having breathing problems which caused me to have to be intubated (a tube was placed into my lungs to help  me breathe) and was put on a breathing machine.  After about a week I was taken off of the breathing machine only to develop worse breathing problems, I had to have a tracheotomy and be place back on the breathing machine.  About a week later, I was taken off the machine and I was told that it was time to go to rehab.

Once I was at Sharp Rehab in San Diego, I finally had to deal with the reality of being paralyzed.  I had to relearn all of the basics.  You would think that eating and swallowing or even talking would be easy , but it ended up being one of the toughest fights that I have had to beat yet.  I still had to learn how to transfer out of bed and get dressed on my own.  The time I spent in rehab seemed to take forever and I never thought that I would ever go home and live a normal life.  The doctors told me I would never live on my own and I would need assistance everyday ...I would be lucky not to be a vegetable. 

That was the point I realized that it was time to crap or get off the pot.  I could either be happy that I wasn't dead and pissed off that I was paralyzed or I could push myself to be better than I was before and prove the doctors wrong.

I put together this website to show you all what I have accomplished and how anyone who is interested can get out there and experience the same things I have and get the same enjoyment I have from living on the edge......