Reinstall lion via flash drive

Hi,  I have a macbook pro with Lion loaded on it and the mail has become unusable.  I'm wondering if I should do a backup of my stuff with time machine then reinstall Lion.   My problem is I took out my dvd drive and installed a SSD to boot from in that spot so I don't have a functioning dvd drive. 
Isn't there a way to download a disk image or something onto a flash drive of the OS and reinstall it?   And if so could anyone walk me through it like I'm a 10 yr old as I'm somewhat computer literate but way behind most of you.
Thanks in advance for your help.

http://www.macworld.com/article/161069/2011/07/make_a_bootable_lion_installer.ht ml

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