those crazy missouri thunderstorms

well, i thought the best way to get this news out was to blog about it, since i don't particularly like to tell the story so much. so, yesterday morning, i asked my mom if she wants to go for a walk with the girls. grace had asked the day before if we could go for a walk and i told her no since it was too hot (she asked at like 3 in the afternoon) and that we could go for a walk in the morning. well, we were scheduled to have thunderstorms yesterday, so i said... mom, let's go before it starts raining. so, we headed out without even eating breakfast. we like to walk at this lake that is really close to our house. so, when we get to the lake, we start our walk and it starts to sprinkle a little bit. we decided that since it is just sprinkling and not thundering we should go on. well, we continue walking and at our turnaround point to walk back to the car (we can't walk all the way around, it is like 6 miles) we stop for a few minutes at a creek and watch the tadpoles. we decide to head back and all of the sudden it starts thundering and lightning really badly. i mean, like ear shattering thunder and really close. well, the babies that my mom and i are, we start screaming and running back to the car. grace and raegan are freaking out as well. it is really loud and at this point it is raining again. i realize that we are about 1/2 - 3/4 of a mile from our car, so i tell my mom to walk (she is pushing grace) and i will run with raegan (who i'm pushing) and will get the car and then come back to get them.

so, i start running and just as i reach the top of this small hill, i have to slow down to walk because i'm tired. i see off to my right in a small parking lot this boy who had been fishing walking to his car. i continue walking and all of the sudden i realize that i have fallen down and i am on my knees. i look around thinking, how did i fall down, did i trip? and my teeth kind of hurt. well, as i am looking around, i notice that the boy is laying on the ground by his van. he is laying on his back with his fishing pole in his hand. i wonder to myself if he is laying down on purpose... is it safer to lay down in a lightning storm? well, i keep looking at him and i take raegan out of the stroller and about this time, my mom is coming over the hill and she is wondering why there is someone on the ground and why raegan is out of the stroller. as i get closer i tell my mom that i don't think that he is breathing. then i see that he is taking a breath about once every ten seconds. well, we start calling for help to the nearby fisherman and i grab the boy's keys and open his car to see if he has a cell phone. (both me and my mom had left ours in the car). i dial 911 and hand the phone to a fisherman that has come over after hearing our cries for help. we put grace in the boy's car with my mom and 911 tells us to start chest compressions with no breathing. so, the man does. at this point, a truck with a family who had been fishing drives up saying that they heard our cries for help and me and raegan get inside the truck to get out of the rain (which is a downpour by now and still thundering and lightning). the family drives us over to our car and then i drive back to where the boy is and keep grace and raegan in my car. about this time, the ambulance arrives and the paramedics start working on him. we tell them that we think that he has been struck by lightning.

in the slightly more controlled environment with the paramedics there to help, i start to think about what happenend. i realize that when the lightning struck, i was knocked to the ground because i was so close to where it hit (less than 50 feet from the boy). then, i start to worry about raegan, who was there with me, and the baby. so, we tell the paramedics that i am pregnant and they suggest i go to the hospital. we drop grace off with aaron, and then we head to the emergency room. after several hours, they tell me that my ecg was normal and do an ultrasound and the baby seems to be fine. the only real damage i seem to have sustained is in my knees which are scraped and bruised). the doctors think that raegan was protected since she was in the stroller and not actually touching the ground.

the thing is, what happened to us was really awful, but i am so grateful that we were there. if we hadn't been there i don't know how long it would have been before someone found the boy. there was no one around him and he probably would have died. the boy, david mcadams, was taken to the hospital and they told us that he was breathing on his own and had a pulse and they would be transporting him the university hospital in columbia (about 30 miles from jeff city). they now have him listed in serious condition. it turns out that he was not actually struck by lightning, but either his car was, or the ground very close to him was.