#HUMAN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING SCARS HOW TO#
#HUMAN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING SCARS CRACK#

Her right arm was paralyzed, pinned against her chest in a pledge of allegiance.

One afternoon in 2009, a hiker named Becky Garriss awoke on the Appalachian Trail in Vermont, sitting on a bed of pine needles, her back against a tree, as though she’d fallen asleep in its shade. True entry and exit wounds are uncommon, but lightning typically leaves some kind of mark on the skin.

#HUMAN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING SCARS HOW TO#

Paramedics, often needing to treat victims who aren’t entirely sure what has happened to them, receive brief training on how to recognize the common signs of a lightning strike.

Nearly everything we now know about treating lightning victims concerns the immediate wounds, many of which don’t even require special medical knowledge. The incident rates are simply not high enough to warrant an entire subfield of science. Although many scientists have spent their careers examining the physics of lightning, only a handful of doctors and researchers have devoted themselves to the study of how lightning damages the human body. Something happened in a single moment-something strange and rare, something unbelievable-and after that moment, everything has changed.Įven more confounding is that almost no one in the mainstream medical community can explain what’s happening to them. Chronic pain, memory trouble, personality changes, and mood swings can all follow an encounter with lightning, leaving friends and family members confused, while survivors, grappling with a fundamental shift in identity, feel increasingly alienated by the incomprehensible nature of their condition. Why me? For most victims, it is not the unforgettable horror of an agonizing ordeal that haunts them-many can’t even recall the incident itself it’s the mysterious physical and psychological symptoms that emerge, often long after their immediate wounds have healed and doctors have cleared them to return to their normal routines. When lightning hits a human being, a survivor must reconcile not only what happened but why it happened. It blazes a discrete path through the sky. A cloud-to-ground lightning bolt is different. Rain, snow, and hail are largely indiscriminate: within a certain radius, everything is drenched, blanketed, or pelted. In popular culture, to be hit by a bolt of lightning is to suffer extremely bad luck.

“You were struck by lightning 38 days ago.” “You’re on your way to rehab,” the paramedic said. His first memory after leaving the golf course is of waking up in a different ambulance, tubes down his throat, monitors everywhere, and a paramedic in a blue smock at his feet. Not the arrival of the paramedics, nor having his heart restarted in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. As Sullivan rushed off to get help, the clouds unleashed a deluge of rain and hail. Gill, an ex-Marine who had recently taken a refresher course in CPR, ran to Utley’s side, began blowing air into his lungs, and instructed Todd to perform chest compressions. His shoes were several feet away from his body his fingers looked like they had been flambéed his eyebrows and wavy chestnut hair were wiry and crisped. Their friend had collapsed in a single perplexing instant.

#HUMAN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING SCARS CRACK#

Seconds later, the guys in front heard a thunderous crack and turned to see Utley stumbling to the ground, tendrils of smoke curling off his body. Utley walked back to the hole and returned the flagstick. Gill, Todd, and Sullivan immediately headed toward the clubhouse. Shortly after lunch, the dark clouds that had been mushrooming in the distance all morning were hovering close enough to merit the bleating of the course’s storm horn-time to clear the green. On May 8, 2000, Utley, a 48-year-old stockbroker, was golfing with his coworkers Dick Gill and Bill Todd, along with their friend Jim Sullivan, in the village of Pocasset, Massachusetts, about three miles south of the Cape Cod Canal. Over the years, he has woven together a narrative of what happened using threads collected from witnesses, friends, and family. Michael Utley does not remember much about his death.

Human struck by lightning scars