Definition of struck by lightening? Sorry this is long...

Post Reply New Topic

I'm hoping some educated maybe science buffs can answer this question. I've been researching it and not coming up with a definitive definition. So if you tell someone you were struck by lightening does it have to be a direct strike as in the lightening bolt going point blank into the body?

Before you think I'm totally bizarre for asking let me explain please. Years ago I had an "encounter" with lightening. Right as I was walking through the living room a bolt of lightening came through the window and struck the tv (which was playing). The lightening bolt passed right by my abdomen as I started to walk in front of the window. It was as if everything was in slow motion. I saw that the lightening was not some straight line (like the Gatorade logo) but instead had electrical "fingers" that came out from the main bolt as it passed by me. It was all jaggedy. I would say their was 1-2 inches between me and the main bolt. I saw the sparkling finger reach out to my abdomen. And as it did I felt the worst pain I have ever felt. It felt like millions of needles being jabbed into the skin. It felt like the lightening went out through my hands and feet and I remember I couldn't catch my breathe for like a second or two kinda like how it feels when having an asthma attack but with no wheezing. My right arm & feet and hands ached and tingled for many hours afterwards. I still hurt a little the next day.

The whole thing was so weird and I was actually mesmerized (or was I in shock?) by the lightening. I mean it was like it was alive, like a wild creature or like seeing God face to face. It moved like liquid light. As it hit the tv there was a loud pop, a whiff of electrical smoke and the tv was dead. I saw the lightening fingers lapping against the darkened screen as it continued to linger. Then it evaporated and I was alone and in pain.

My dad was out of town at the time and I had no medical insurance. So I didn't go to dr, well I wasn't sure if I needed to because there was no burn marks. I used an ice pack on my arm to numb it is all. I told my dad when he came back a few days later and he didn't believe me. He did believe the tv though because it had a melted circuit board that the tv repairman had never seen happen before. It took several weeks to get it back because the guy had over 100 other people bring in their fried tvs the storm was so bad.

I hadn't really thought about this in years until I read something in a magazine about someone who had lots of medical problems after being struck. I have had a series of weird health problems develop including neuropathy in my feet and nope they found I don't have diabetes which is the main reason to have it. Recently it was discovered I have a bad heart valve and the cardiologist has not seen this kind of malfunction in anyone before. I was having really bad headaches several years ago so I had MRI and they found brain lesions which they couldn't explain. After I read the magazine article I thought have I been stupid to never tell any dr this happened to me? Could it be the root cause of the weird problems?

I am being sent to a new neurologist and wondering if I should tell her. But I want to know was I technically struck by lightening or did I just get a jolt from it? I mean technically does the person have to be in front of the bolt and the whole bolt go into them to have been considered "struck"?

Hope I am making sense.

No, contact at all is enough. As a matter of fact I'm pretty sure nobody would survive being struck with the lightning going completely through. Most survivors are struck in a similar fashion to the way you were struck.

Really? I just remember all these tv news stories talking about how people had scorch marks, entire muscles blown away or even had their clothes blown off so what I went through was less dramatic. I think it was in the Genis Book of World Records" that I had when I was a kid that had a picture of a man who had been struck and he had a hole in his hat surrounded by scorch marks. Then a guy here in town was struck last summer as he walked out of a building. The newspaper or tv news didn't show any pictures, but over a month or more later they said he was getting to come home from hospital finally. But that he would need physical therapy for some time. I guess there is just degrees of injury from being struck.

I actually wrote a letter to a lightening injury support group asking them if it sounded like I was struck. But no one responded back so I assumed the answer was no.

Thanks!