Dad struck by lightning carrying his two kids on school sports day reveals ‘miracle’ recovery
Last Update: June 20, 2018 at 12:08 pm
SOURCE: Mirror.co.uk
March 12, 2017
Dad Geordie Allen said: “One doctor told me, ‘That’s you done, you’re bedridden for life.’ And now they say I’ll walk again. It’s a miracle really.”
Hooked up to machines in his hospital bed, a dazed Geordie Allen would ask his wife every day what had happened to him.
And for a month Sharon, 34, had to repeatedly explain that he and two of his children were almost burnt alive in an instant – by one of Britain’s worst lightning accidents.
Their dad’s brain was traumatised and he had no recollection of the three-million-to-one accident that nearly cost Sharon her loved ones.
And each morning she found that he had forgotten yet again.
Geordie, 37, was in the playground on school sports day with Geordie Jnr, five, and seven-year-old Georgha when they were hit by a bolt. For a fraction of a second it was five times hotter than the sun.
His boy was thrown out of his arms and hurled across the playground, his daughter’s clothes were burnt into her skin and his own heart stopped for 55 minutes.
The dad-of-six was in a coma for four weeks – then spent the next five months in hospital, strapped up to monitors and unable to walk.
Sharon told the Sunday People : “We had to keep breaking the news to him every day that he had been hit by lightning because he kept forgetting.”
But incredibly Geordie is finally back home with his family and on his way to making a full recovery.
Speaking for the first time about the ordeal, Geordie said: “One doctor told me, ‘That’s you done, you’re bedridden for life.’
“And now they say I’ll walk again. It’s a miracle really.
“The doctors had never seen anything like it so it was impossible for them to know how I would recover or if I ever could.”
Last June Geordie, a recycling processor from Lisburn, Co. Antrim, in Northern Ireland, was carrying Geordie Jnr and holding Georgha’s hand at the end of sports day when a thunderstorm started.
Suddenly they were hit by a lightning bolt which could have measured up to one billion volts.
Geordie Jnr was thrown from his father’s arms in the playground to the nearby football pitch while Georgha suffered burns on her arms.
She watched horrified as her dad lay on the ground, his heart stopped.
Vice-principal Ashleigh Mulligan and other teachers used Killowen Primary School’s defibrillator to deliver much smaller electric shocks to try to restart the dad’s heart.
Sharon, who got a phone call, said: “I rushed there and it was like a war scene. The rain was still lashing down and there was lightning flashing, thunder still roaring.
“All the kids were screaming in the playground. When we did find Geordie Jnr he had been blasted on to the nearby football pitch because of the impact of the bolt.
“He was given CPR but then went into a seizure in the ambulance. It was like being in a nightmare.”
Geordie Jnr was rushed to the specialist children’s unit at Royal Belfast Hospital along with Georgha.
The girl’s raincoat had melted into her skin. Their father, who was taken in the next ambulance to Lagan Valley Hospital, suffered multiple organ failure and severe burns.
He needed four operations that day. The children returned home after a few days but their dad was transferred to a specialist care unit at Ulster Hospital.
It would be a month before he woke from his coma.
Sharon said: “The doctors told me for the first five nights, ‘There is no way he will survive.’
“The lightning shut off everything in his body. But Geordie has made up the rules himself.
“It went from being told he was going to die, to being told he won’t move his fingers again, to being told he won’t walk again. But he has proven them wrong every step of the way.”
Geordie was finally allowed home just before Christmas thanks to the local community group Ballymacash Cultural Awareness Project raising £5,000 to help out.
The money went towards adding mobility aids in several rooms in their semi-detached house. Now his memory is gradually improving although he has no recollection of the accident.
He’s been back in his local gym doing light weights to build up his strength and he might be able to walk without any help by summer.
FULL STORY: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-struck-lightning-carrying-two-10008589