"My body had not moved at all from the position it was in when I was struck and fell into a heap on the pavement. My once beautiful new suit, enjoyed in its glory for barely a few fateful moments, was now permanently gray, and the soles of my beloved new pumps, still on my feet, were gone. They had taken the force of the electrical current as it grounded out through me and then through them.
"As I opened my eyes, I saw people moving toward me from the synagogue. Initially, I was confused as it dawned on me that while I had been somewhere else for what I experienced as two weeks, here on the parking lot pavement it was likely not more than a couple of minutes. I couldn’t understand how I had received so much information and had been so completely transformed in such a short time. It was jarring and bewildering.
"Serendipitously, one of the many physicians at services that night had extensive experience treating victims of lightning strikes and electrocution. He was a white-water rafter hobbyist and had helped several people who had been struck by lightning while rafting. Apparently, this is not an uncommon experience for white-water rafters. And, it is not uncommon for the Universe to provide exactly the person you need, with exactly the skills you need that person to have, exactly where and when your need arises.
"Doctors concluded that the relatively modest injuries from my lightning encounter were probably due to how I was struck and the nature of lightning itself. Lightning transmits its force downward, as it seeks the earth to ground out. From the top of my umbrella, the electricity flowed through the frame of the umbrella to the place on the metal shaft above the wooden handle where my wedding ring had been in contact with it. Had the lightning hit directly on my body, say, on my head, or if more of my hand had been in direct contact with the metal of the umbrella when it took the jolt, my experience would likely have been a permanent death experience rather than a near-death experience.
"When I awoke, it was still raining, but not storming as it had been minutes earlier. I have vague memories of being helped into the synagogue and onto the couch in the rabbi’s study. I was in and out of awareness, and really very tired. Several people were there, including the doctor who was a specialist in electrocution. I recall him telling me repeatedly to open my eyes. I was able to open them, but I could keep them open for only a few seconds, maybe up to a minute at a time. I was so tired, exhausted really. After examining me, the doctor concluded that I had a mild lightning injury, an MLI. He felt that I didn’t need to be hospitalized at that point.
"The doctor listened to my heart with his stethoscope and said it sounded fine. I was concerned that I couldn’t move my left arm and hand, but he explained that I had keraunoparalysis (lightning paralysis) that would be temporary. He said I would be able to move my hand and arm when the paralysis wore off in several hours. The paralysis lasted for about six hours before it subsided. He also encouraged me to have the burns on my feet and left hand checked and treated the next day. He explained that I’d have to stay off my feet, which meant bed rest, until the burns on my feet healed enough to be able to get around.
"So, I was back to my world. But I was soon to
discover that I was no longer me."
Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.
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