Ryan Cross, 34, from Nampa,
Idaho, was left with a red scar down his torso after the bolt entered
the top of his head and exited through the base of his back.
Mr
Cross was hit by lightning during a camping trip with friends near
Idaho City, when he got caught in a storm while riding his four-wheeler.
He
found shelter under a tree in the woods and was looking for directions
home on his phone's map to find a way out when he was hit by the
lightning bolt.
The father-of-two fell unconscious
and was rushed to Saint Alphonsus Medical Center with bleeding on the
brain and doctors feared he could be paralyzed.
The clothing he was wearing was shredded from his body after the strike and hot to the touch.
His
wife, Heather Cross, recalled the horrifying moment she was told what
had happened to her husband, grabbed their two children and drove to the
hospital.
She said: "I really just tried to stay
strong. The drive from Nampa to here (Boise) was the longest drive of my
life. I didn't know what I was going to walk into."
Fortunately Mr Cross was alert and appeared to be improving, managing to walk around a little.
The odds of being struck by lightning in the U.S. is 1 in 700,000 each year. In a lifetime, those odds drop to 1 in 3,000.
It is estimated that more than one hundred bolts of lightning strike the Earth every second.
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