[Lifestyle} Struck by lightning, my face burned and my memory disappeared. Here is how I made it back

[BirSaNN]

For Scott Knudsen, it was shaping up to be a good day. It was his daughter’s first birthday, and his wife Tracy had just called to say she had a surprise for him. Knudsen had been in town, fetching hay and running chores for their ranch in rural Texas. He thought Tracy might have got him another horse. But when he got home, it was even better: Tracy was there, with baby Hailey and they had washed his dirty tractor. Now, nearly 20 years later, still on the same ranch, Knudsen smiles at the memory. “Oh my goodness, it made me so happy.”

It was mid-afternoon, on a July day in 2005. Knudsen was 37 years old. In the distance there was a thunderstorm – he could see the rain clouds, 15 or so miles away – but where they stood there were blue-skies and calm. Several of their horses were out to pasture; there were chickens around, pecking at the dirt. Tracy handed Hailey to Knudsen to hold.

He remembers it as a contented moment: “It was one of those young-couple, happy moments; it was so peaceful. And then, just like that – it changed.”

Suddenly, a lightning bolt struck Knudsen, entering through his head and exiting through his left hand. He remembers bright light and “the loudest noise”. The horses ran for cover, while pipes that had been buried deep underground lurched to the surface. In their home, 300 yards (275m) from where they stood, the television blew out. Then, just as abruptly, the chaos passed.

Knudsen was still standing, but Hailey had somehow ended up in Tracy’s arms in the commotion. “I knew we’d been hit by lightning,” he says. “We started laughing.” There was just something ludicrous about it. “There were blue skies! How in the world could that have happened?”

In fact, lightning is one of nature’s most frequently occurring spectacles, with around 3m flashes globally every day – equating to 1.4bn strikes each year, or 44 strikes every second. In the US, about 40m lightning strikes hit the ground annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nonetheless, the odds of being struck are slim: less than one in a million. Of those unlucky ones, the majority – almost 90% – survive. In 15 years, from 2006 to 2021, 444 deaths from lightning were recorded across the entire US.

Knudsen is a fifth-generation Texan, born and raised in Georgetown, 75 miles away from Fredericksburg, his closest city. Now 54 years old, he appears on a video call as the quintessential cowboy, wearing a white Stetson that accentuates his tan, in front of a wall covered with bridles and reins.

Knudsen and his wife bought their ranch soon after learning she was pregnant with Hailey. Tracy was a “city girl”, he says, but Knudsen had grown up knowing how to read the land – how to watch the weather, which risks to take.

Lightning strikes were a known danger: Knudsen had once seen a tree get hit, instantly killing the cows beneath it. But that afternoon, there was no sign, no time to take cover.

After the impact, his brain felt like an old TV that had been unplugged. “You remember back in the old days, all those fuzzies and it would take a minute to reboot?” The three of them made their way back to the house, shell-shocked but apparently unharmed. “I thought I was OK,” says Knudsen. “I’m not trying to be a macho cowboy or anything – I just thought we were going to be fine, because I’ve had hard hits my whole life, doing what I do.”

link: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/09/struck-by-lightning-my-face-burned-and-my-memory-disappeared-here-is-how-i-made-it-back