Woman recalls the horrifying moment she was ‘burned’ from the inside after being struck by lightning
Topics: News, World News, US News, Weather, Health
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: GoFundMe/ NBC Boston
Topics: News, World News, US News, Weather, Health
A woman recalled the horrifying moment that she was 'burnt' inside her body after being struck by lightning.
Thalita Teixeira Padilla, 32, had been out walking her dog when she was struck by lightning in the chest.
When you think of the kind of injury you can get from an extreme electric shock, burns are common from the huge amount of energy which is being discharged.
For Thalita, this meant that she suffered a cardiac arrest and didn't have oxygen for 15 minutes.
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Not only that, but the intense energy had burned Thalita inside her body.
This resulted in a spinal cord injury, while the sound of the lightning strike ruptured one of her eardrums, as well as scaring away her dog.
In a small mercy, the Australian shepherd dog was found hours later unharmed and the pair were reunited after the horrific incident.
She described her injuries in a piece for PEOPLE about the incident and her recovery.
Thalita wrote: "The lightning burned my chest and my spinal cord from the inside, leaving me with a spinal cord injury, something I didn’t find out about until three months after the incident.
"The bolt then came out of my right leg, my knee and foot. And I suffered a lot of nerve damage."
As a result of being struck, Thalita lost the ability to walk as well as the hearing in one of her ears.
She had to relearn how to do many every day things in life, such as bathing and texting.
At first, she couldn't lift her arms above her head, but was determined to do everything she could to get better.
She wrote: "There were still small miracles that my husband later told me about. Despite what happened, I didn’t have any broken bones, a brain bleed or brain damage."
The nurse added: "Honestly, I was depressed and in so much pain. I didn’t even want to wake up in the morning because I felt pain all over, and it was nerve pain so nobody knew how to treat it or had ever seen it before.
"It was a very unique pain that I felt from my spinal cord injury. Fortunately, I’ve since stopped feeling that pain. Maybe my body just needed time."
Despite all this, Thalita shared that she wants to continue doing what she can to help people.
She said that it could have happened to anyone, and that she was 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'.