What It Feels Like … to Be Struck by Lightning

[GraceAbounds]

What It Feels Like … to Be Struck by Lightning

By Max Dearing, 42, sound engineer, as told to Daniel Torday
I have a degree in electronics, so I know about the destructive power of high-voltage energy, but this was beyond what I could have imagined. I was struck on a typical North Carolina July afternoon — little billowy clouds floating by, mostly sunny.
I was out golfing in Durham with four of my coworkers on a Friday afternoon. We were on the fifth hole when it started to sprinkle. We decided to get under a shelter and wait it out. We were standing there, just kind of harassing each other the way we always did, just talking junk. I remember the air had a sweet ozone smell to it. That's about the last thing I recall before the strike.
When the bolt hit, I was absolutely frozen, just as cold as I've ever been in my entire life, but then part of me was incredibly hot, too. I saw these red flashing lights, and I kept thinking, It's a fire truck! A fire truck! as if I were a little kid. Then there was the most incredible noise I'd ever heard. The sound was so loud that I honestly couldn't hear anything. Evidently, it's so loud that it blows the cilia in the ear completely flat.
I felt as if I'd been slammed between two Dumpsters. It was like every case of the flu you've ever had, at one time. My arms and my legs and my hands all felt as if they weighed five thousand pounds. Every bit of my body was just in absolute pain. It was such a dull ache, and so sharp at the same time; it was like everything from a migraine headache to a hangover to needles being stuck in every millimeter of your body. My hair hurt, my eyelashes hurt; I could feel it when my hair moved, when the wind blew across me.
The lightning bolt had gone down along a tree next to us, taken off some branches on its way down, and then hit the overhang of the shelter, putting a huge hole in it. Then it went through Terry, one of my buddies. He was struck through the top of his head, and it came out his knee. It killed him immediately. Then it shot up from the ground and hit the rest of us. It went up through me and left an exit wound in my head that needed eight staples.
Now I have a hard time with addition and subtraction. I can handle some fairly complex math involving trigonometry and calculus, but don't ask me to add. The doctors say, "Oh, there's nothing wrong with you." But I know there is. Figuring out how to fix it, that's about like shooting mosquitoes with a shotgun.

What It Feels Like … to Perform a Heart Transplant

By Peter Martin
As told by Dr. Mehmet Oz, 47, heart surgeon
There's this whole ritual around going into the OR for a transplant that makes me feel like a high priest going into the temple: I cleanse myself, the patient is cleansed, and we go to a sterile environment.
The donor heart arrives in a cooler, and it feels like frozen turkey. It's about the same color, too. And slippery. Sewing it in should take less than forty-five minutes. To make sure no air gets in, the final sutures are put in underwater — under blood, actually. It's sort of like having sex: You need to feel the stitch. You sense the tip of the needle, and it has to feel correct — you're not going in too far, or missing the tissue, or getting too small a bite. As you're sewing, the heart starts to fill with blood. You have to time the last suture just right, just as the blood gets to the top.
The real anxiety comes when both clamps are removed and the blood starts flowing with pressure through the heart. That's when I can't help but wonder if I just killed someone. The new heart jumps around, trying to get its rhythm, like a fish flopping in a bucket of blood. Sometimes it can't. It just fibrillates, beating spastically, and we have to shock it.
The first five minutes are the most critical. If the heart turns from cream to pink, the color of a juicy steak, we're optimistic. There's this incredible feeling of bliss, like we've just reached our Zen moment. The high fives come out. But if it turns dark red and looks bruised, it's damaged, sometimes irreversibly. Then we close the skin up with number-two nylon, and I go out to tell the family I'm sorry.

What It Feels Like … to Perform a Heart Transplant -   MSN Lifestyle: Men

 

[Homer]

i used to hump telephones poles for a living like in climbing i was a catv tech , anyway one day it was very hot so i went up with out my hard hat i was all sweaty and the top of my head tuched a hot/live bell line , man did i see stars it was only 60 volts but i never saw it coming bang right thru the brain:eek , how i held on to that pole i'll never know , i guess what i'm trying to say is ever since that day if i even thought lightning was around i was like :rant:and seeing lightning hit a sidewalk while i was sitting in my truck didn't help that scared the pop out of me and turned some of the sidewalk into glass :eek i have alot of respect for mother nature.

 

[GraceAbounds]

Yikes Homer!

 

[TheOriginalJames]

i used to hump telephones poles for a living like in climbing i was a catv tech , anyway one day it was very hot so i went up with out my hard hat i was all sweaty and the top of my head tuched a hot/live bell line , man did i see stars it was only 60 volts but i never saw it coming bang right thru the brain:eek , how i held on to that pole i'll never know , i guess what i'm trying to say is ever since that day if i even thought lightning was around i was like :rant:and seeing lightning hit a sidewalk while i was sitting in my truck didn't help that scared the pop out of me and turned some of the sidewalk into glass :eek i have alot of respect for mother nature.

You're a lucky man, Homer. My grandpa was a telephone tech and somehow hit an electrical line. it blew him back and his feet got tangled in the ladder. He basically went into a comatosed state, went completely relaxed (limp) and fell off the ladder head first.

It wasn't the blast from the power line that killed him, it was the fall.

 

[Homer]

wow i'm sorry to hear that , i wasn't even on a ladder i was climbing with hooks on my boots and i wasn't even belted in yet to this day i don't know how i held on.