Terry Montre (Tre) Ledford (28) of the West End of Louisville, KY leads a busy life. He works at RCS Transportation, a group that helps to move the Ford trucks that come off the assembly line to different points throughout the country. After work, he usually heads to the gym around 6:00 p.m. “I do my recovery workouts, and try to strengthen my leg back up and prepare to go back to work. It’s been a long recovery, but I’m going back to work, so we’ll be getting back to a normal schedule pretty soon. I’m a little nervous, but it’s also exciting to get back to normal. I’ve been in the house for seven or eight months, and it hasn’t been easy to move around. Getting back to work is the last step before things will feel as ‘normal’ as they were before.”
“A normal day would be waking up at 6:00, and getting to work by 7:00 a.m. I’d get off between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m. and get home, maybe take a nap, maybe eat. I’d drink protein shakes throughout the day because I’m a big gym-goer, so I’d relax for a few hours before taking my 4-year-old son to the YMCA, and I could take him to the little daycare or play area they have. I could work out for a bit, then we’d hit the grocery store. My girl would cook some food for us, we’d watch a movie and relax…and then do it all over again. The main things that stayed consistent though were working and going to the YMCA, then different things like going out or going to a movie or something.”
Exercise has always been a major part of Tre’s life. While he was injured, he used some free weights at home just to try and stay active. “From the amount of muscle and mobility that I lost made the home workouts much harder than how it feels now. But all the work I did at home made getting back into the gym an easy process. I saw a lot of the same people I used to see all the time, and they all wondered where I had been. I never knew whether to go into the whole story, or just let them know I was in an accident…but it felt good to get back in there. It feels more like it used to before the accident.”
Tre was always academically inclined. “I did pretty well in school, I was always in honor roll or advanced classes. I went to UofL for two years, but I got nervous about what I was going to do with my future, especially since I was paying my way through school. I decided to start working on my own, or starting my own business or something. I was also very athletic. I love being outside, or by some water, and being in nature or around animals.”
“I’ve been through a lot in my life. I lost my mom when I was maybe eight or nine years old. I lost a lot of friends and loved ones at a young age, so I’ve been through a lot of trauma just from life, let alone my accident. I always stayed positive though, and stayed disciplined with the plan I came up with to make life better for my son. We’re getting there. My uncle helped me get this job, and life has really started looking up since then, it’s helped give me an opportunity to provide for my family.”
On the evening of 4th of July, 2023 near the intersection of Shelbyville Road and Whipps Mill Road at 7:04 p.m., Tre’s life took a drastic turn. His day started with a quick workout before heading home to get ready for an evening with family. Along the way, he noticed that there was a food truck near the Chick-Fil-A in Oxmoor, offering chicken wings. Tre decided to try some of the food when he noticed some family going down Shelbyville Road - his brother’s mom and little sister were driving by. “It’s a pretty good day and I’m feeling good. I ate and went home to change, and then started heading up Shelbyville Road towards Hurstbourne. After going past that food truck and approaching Whipps Mill, I’m over in the far lane when I notice a guy in a van swerving like crazy in between the lanes. I remember thinking it was unbelievable that he hadn’t hit anything; it was a state of shock and disbelief at how he was driving, and not hitting anything. At the same time, I’m trying to maneuver out of the way, but it didn’t look like he was going to hit me. I didn’t think he’d hit me. But he was swerving at 60, maybe 70 miles per hour, swerving. I tried getting out of the way, but the position where he hit me was that he hit me directly. His old minivan hit my Nissan Sentra at the 11:00 position - he got hit at the 1:00 position.”
“When I got hit, I could feel the pressure and impact, but it didn’t feel like that bad of a hit. I was preparing to confront him for driving so crazily…I think I may have blacked out for a few seconds. I slid off the road and hit a fence, and apparently his van did a flip over my car and he flew out of the van - apparently he landed and skidded on his head.”
“After the airbags went off, it was dark in the car. I heard people outside screaming, ‘The car is going to catch fire!’ At that point I jump into survival mode trying to get out of the car so I wouldn’t get burned, but I’m having a difficult time moving around. Fortunately some people nearby were able to help me get out of the car, especially one guy who helped me in particular. All the ribs on my left side broke, and my femur in the middle of my thigh had a compound fracture; the bone was poking through my leg. The radius in my arm was broken as well; I couldn’t move the way I wanted to. My spleen and liver were both lacerated, and they had to remove my spleen. My stomach ripped up my diaphragm from the impact, and my stomach was dislocated to be near my heart. I couldn’t feel any of this though, I was running on adrenaline.”
After he laid down on the ground, the pain from the impact started to settle in. “I realized it wasn’t a fender bender, and my vision and hearing started going crazy; I couldn’t really see or hear anything.” An ambulance arrived fairly quickly - within just a few moments. “I was coherent, but I didn’t want to be, with the way everything felt all at once. I felt like I had no control of my body.”
Tre was taken to UofL Health. “I was heavily medicated but I was awake for the first few days I was there. My heartbeat and my lungs were both pretty messed up; my heart rate kept spiking for no reason or no activity, and my lungs were only operating at about 20%. They ended up putting me in a coma for 13 days. I had dreams, and all types of weird stuff going on in the coma. Eventually they took me off the medicine, and then I woke up, realizing I was in the hospital. I went from being a healthy guy, feeling like superman, to suddenly I can barely breathe, can’t eat or drink because of the tub in my neck…like that.” Fortunately, Tre didn’t suffer from any significant spinal or neurological damage from the hit.
The first few days after the surgeries and the coma were challenging, and day by day Tre began to understand the extent of his injuries. “I still had the same brain and same mindset as I did before, so I’m in the hospital trying to get up, move around, pull stuff off, things I shouldn’t have been doing at that point so soon after the accident. I thought it would only be a few days in the hospital, but between the hospital and rehab, I was in there for a much longer time. I didn’t have a mirror and didn’t realize I had lost over 50 pounds after all this time. One nurse said I was only skin and bones. That’s when it hit me that I was really messed up.”
Breathing proved to be the hardest part for Tre. “Getting off the ventilator was weird; especially breathing on your own after a machine had been breathing for you for so long. It was so hard to breathe normally or manually. Of course that would only spike my heart rate. Relearning how to breathe was challenging.”
Little things that were mainstays in Tre’s life felt harder to come by, including getting enough protein (like the 200 grams a day he was used to), or getting sleep. Tre experienced ICU delirium, and all the different medications caused him to feel delusional. “I was making up stories in my mind, thinking people were saying things they didn’t actually. Those were some of the hardest days I’ve ever had. Physically it was a battle just like breathing, but mentally it was a battle of being in there and going crazy, and realizing you’re not who you thought you were. That you’re in a completely different shape than you used to be. The mental battle was very challenging.”
Tre was at UofL from the 4th of July through about August 20th. He was discharged to Frazier Rehabilitation Institute, and spent the next two weeks there recovering.
“I didn’t know what to expect from Frazier; by that point, I had kind of receded into myself. I had hoped that when I got to Frazier I’d be able to be taken off some of the medications or other things I was on. I don’t really take medicine, I’m mostly just a water and supplements kind of guy. I was ready to get those tubes out of my body. But a few days before discharge, I still didn’t know when I was going to go. Things change in the hospital all the time, and reality might be different from what they think or say.”
“I was nervous being in a vehicle, and definitely nervous about breathing on my own, and being removed from the ventilator. I was scared of not being able to breathe well enough. But they set me up in a big room at Frazier, that was a nice feeling. Going from the ICU, to the normal floor at UofL, and then a bigger room at Frazier was nice. I was still nervous about everything, but it ended up being fine.”
The team at Frazier put together a comprehensive plan for Tre, including speech, occupational, and physical therapy. “I wasn’t really looking forward to the physical therapy, but I knew I needed it. But they introduced themselves, and started working me through some mobility with my hands, and started me small to get things working normally. Then my knee, and my leg, which was so swollen it felt locked into position; it couldn’t bend at all. I’d do little memory problems with speech therapy just to make sure my mind was still functioning. But from there it was pretty much straight physical and occupational therapy all day every day. I was glad my mental capacity wasn’t as impacted.”
Tre was eventually discharged from Frazier around September 9th. “I was nervous when they said I could go home. I didn’t know what I would do without someone there to help me if I needed it; I got comfortable having the hospital staff there, especially with my breathing and my heart rate. It was nerve racking, but getting in the car and driving out, it was nice seeing the streets and the same world that I had been in, because I hadn’t been out in the world for so long. I couldn’t wait to get home.”
Recovery at home was a slow process; Tre still had to use a walker and a drain bag for his gallbladder when he first came home, plus he was adjusting to his new bodyweight. “It was hard to get around for a while, but I started going to physical therapy near my house for a month or two. After the first or second visit, I was done with the walker, and seeing myself looking the way I did. I took myself off the walker. Physical therapy was amazing, helping me stretch and strengthen my arm and my leg. It helped tremendously. Then getting the drain bag taken out was a big thing, because I felt like if I was walking around in normal clothes, at least people wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with me.”
Time passed, and around the holidays Tre started doing small, at-home workouts to start building back his body; pushups, body squats, workouts with a weight vest, progressing to resistance bands, and ultimately to free weights at home. “Going from not being able to do a single pushup to building back up, was good for me, especially when people noticed I was getting stronger again. 
The pain got a little better, and my limp started to go away. I started to feel better and better mentally.”
Tre is ready for life to get back to how it was. “I just made my work schedule this week, so I’m excited to get back to my normal routine, and my normal day-to-day. That, I think, is going to be what helps me to really feel like I’ve made it through to the other side of this. I’m ready to get back into the swing of things, going to the Y and seeing my work friends.”
Tre is looking forward to building his savings back up, getting back into his routines, and start building and investing for his future.
Terry Montre (Tre) Ledford.
Provider, Fighter, Disciplined.
Trauma Survivor.
