Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Lightning strikes New Hampshire mom holding her 2 year old

Kelly Bell and her son, Logan (being held by his father, Dan Bell) survived a lightning strike.

A New Hampshire mother and her 2-year-old son who were struck by lightning last week have lived to tell about the incident.

On Tuesday, Kelly Bell and her son Logan headed outside after a thunderstorm, but it turned out the weather wasn’t quite over. “I thought the thunder had passed, it had been 30 minutes since we’d seen anything, so we went outside to see the rain because we like to look at it,” Bell tells Yahoo Parenting. “I said ‘Hey Bubba, look at the rain,’ and then next thing I knew I woke up on the floor.”
Bell says the lightning struck a tree, and then traveled along a metal dog lead, which was connected from the tree to their porch.

Lightning strikes New Hampshire mom holding her 2 year old

“We weren’t touching anything, just standing on the porch,” she says. “The lightning struck the tree, and traveled into the dog lead, which was attached to a nail under our porch. My hand was probably six to eight inches from the lead and the best we can guess is that the lightning traveled into my hand through my wedding ring.”

Since Bell was holding Logan, he was affected too, although Bell bore the brunt of the impact. “He was on my right side and I was struck on my left,” she says.

Both mother and son suffered injuries: Logan has bruises and burns, while Bell was left deaf in one ear. “It may or may not be permanent damage,” she says. “There’s a hole that takes up about a third of my eardrum, so it’s a waiting game to see if my hearing will improve.”

Logan is already on the mend.

“Most of his bruises are just about gone, he’s back to being his old self,” she says. “He still likes to go outside, and he’s not afraid of the porch so that’s good. But we haven’t had any more thunderstorms yet.”

Bell’s doctors say it could have been much worse, and that the mother is extremely lucky. Still, she’s not sure she sees it that way. “Lucky would have been had we stayed inside and the lightning struck and didn’t hit us, but I’m happy to be here,” she says.

Moving forward, Bell says she will be watching rainstorms from inside. “Even if you think the weather has passed, if it still looks storming and it is still raining, stay inside,” she says. “Lightning can be in the area, and you have no idea.”

Dr. Deborah Gilboa, a Pittsburgh-based parenting expert and family physician, says lightning strikes can certainly be fatal. “Electricity passes from where it touches you to the ground, and it is looking for the most direct route to the ground, so if that is through your heart, it can kill you,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “It will affect you and whoever you are holding hands with or, in this case, holding.”