Two years ago, I was hiking with my husband in the mountains of East Tennessee when there was a bright, blinding flash, a loud roar, and then ... nothing.  I don't remember anything until I woke up in a hospital bed, my husband bending over me, worridly, as he held my hand.  

Turns out I had been in the hospital for two months.  I was in a coma.  Doctors didn't know whether I would even survive.  The thing I remember most about that time was trying to figure out what happened and also pain.  Severe, unrelenting pain that coursed through every square inch of my body.  It felt as if I had been slammed with a Mack truck at full speed.  The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced.  It was so bad it literally took my breath away if I moved even a little bit.

I found out that I had been stuck by lightning.  The bolt took a direct hit on my body; it struck me right in the lower back.  I was down for over twenty minutes without breath or heartbeat: I was clinically dead, according to what the doctors had told my husband.  If I were to survive (which, at the time, looked highly doubtful), I would probably be a vegetable with significant brain and physical damage.

I have since recovered from my injuries, but the marks from the lightning strike remain.  While I have regained some of my functions, I am now considered 100% disabled, unable to work again.  I am now in the process of trying to get on disability; it is a very long, frustrating procedure.  Meanwhile, I lay here in my bed, unable to move without white-hot bolts of pain screaming through the pathways of my body.  No amount of medication will touch it.  Oh, it may get down to a dull roar to where I can function fairly easily at times, but more often than not, the pain is severe and I can't think of anything else BUT the pain.

I cannot walk but maybe 50 yards without assistance.  Someone has to always be with me in case I should happen to fall again or risk busting my head open (or breaking some bones, which would only intensify my pain ... as if it isn't already bad enough as it is).  When I walk, I use a walker.  I am too weak to walk under my own power.  I have wasted away to under 90 pounds; I can't eat: between the pain and the medications, I have very little in the way of an appetite.  I have to get my nourishment via a tube in my nose or by the tube in my belly.  I am on IV therapy, as I have to have pain medication running constantly through my body, or else I am a wreck.

My life has been a living hell these past two years.  I wouldn't wish this kind of life on anybody.  It is the worst thing a person could ever go through; I wouldn't wish this kind of horrible pain on my worst enemy!

~To be continued.~