AMAZING
STORY
When
Lightning Strikes!
By
Gorman Woodfin The 700 Club
CBN.com
- I saw Kyle's sneaker off to the side. It was on fire and half-melted.
His sock was disintegrated. When the lightning exited his body, it basically
blew the sock and shoe right off his foot. It started out as a normal,
peaceful Sunday. It was Mother's Day, 1995. The Jones family of Sugarhill, Georgia,
had gone to church that morning. Steven and Denise and their sons, Kyle, age 10,
and Matthew, age 8, had settled into their Sunday afternoon routine. Kyle
and Matthew went up the street to play with some friends. Denise sat at her desk
in front of an upstairs window doing some paperwork. Steven was down the hall
vacuuming. Just as Steven switched the vacuum off, they both heard the
loudest crack of thunder they'd ever heard. Denise called down the hallway, "Wow,
that was close!" They looked up at the sky. It wasn't stormy outside, just a bit
cloudy. The lightning seemed to have come from nowhere. They had no concept that
their lives were about to change forever with that one split-second of electricity
from the sky. A minute after the crash, the phone rang. A neighbor frantically
said, "Quick, Kyle's been hurt." Both Steven and Denise bolted for the door. Steven
ran up the street. From the tone of her neighbor's voice, Denise thought that
Kyle must have broken his leg and needed a doctor, so she went to get the car.
Steven raced up the hill in front of their home. He remembers the eerie
feeling he had as he ran up to the wooden, vacant lot. "It was like running in
slow motion. All the neighbors were standing there motionless, just watching me.
I wondered why they were looking at me like that. Their faces were saying, 'He
doesn't know what's happened. He doesn't know what he's about to see.'" As
Steven made it to his son's unconscious body, a haunting image forever burned
itself in his brain. "When I first ran into the woods, I saw Kyle's sneaker off
to the side about four or five feet away. It was on fire and half-melted. His
sock was disintegrated. We believe the lightning went in through his hand and
then came out his left foot. When the lightning exited his body, it basically
blew the sock and shoe right off his foot." Denise pulled up soon after.
She rushed to Kyle and fell to her knees sobbing, "'Mommy's here.' I just wanted
him to know I was there. His body was twisting so terribly." "Kyle was
basically lifeless," Steven says, "but his body was struggling to stay alive.
I had never seen that before: someone just absolutely fighting to stay alive."
The neighbors were already helping their son. Two of them had begun CPR
within critical minutes after Kyle's accident. "We will never forget his
eyes," Steven says. "They were a color you can't describe. They looked glazed
and dead. It was unbelievable" "They were like a cold gray with a small
black dot for the pupil," Denise says. The girl administering CPR did not
realize who it was. She had been Kyle's babysitter but she didn't recognize this
boy with burns disfiguring 70 percent of his body. Even his fingernails and toenails
were melted. "He had a combination of burns," Denise says. "Some were flash
burns on the exterior and some of them were like burning from the inside out.
It was just incredible." Kyle was rushed to a local hospital. His condition
was so severe the medical personnel felt he should be transferred immediately
to the regional burn unit at Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta. Doctors had a
difficult time getting a breathing tube down Kyle's throat. His chances of survival
were minimal. "There was a chaplain who came in and basically told us,
'Take a last look at your son,'" Denise says through tears. "He said, 'He's probably
not going to make it to the burn center.'" So Steven and Denise slipped into Kyle's
room and quietly looked at their son for what they thought might be the last time.
Miraculously, Kyle did make it to Grady Hospital. Steven rode to Atlanta
in the ambulance with his son. Once in the emergency area, the boy was rushed
into the ER. Kyle's prognosis was awful. Nurses informed Steven and Denise
of a formula used by doctors to determine the chances of survival for burn victims:
You take the percentage of the body that is burned and add the age of the child.
That is a rough calculation for the percentage of children who do not survive.
Steven and Denise added Kyle's 10 years to the 70 percent of his body that
was burned-giving him an 80 percent chance of not making it. Then when the doctors
added the damage caused by the electrocution, their conclusion was that there
was little hope the boy would survive. The medical staff immediately began
pumping Kyle's body with massive amounts of fluids. With most of his skin burned
away, his body could not hold the life sustaining fluids that it desperately needed
to survive. But all through the nightmarish ordeal, Steven and Denise prayed
for their son. Even at the very beginning when they ran up the street and saw
Kyle's body smoldering from the lightning blast, they prayed. Since it
was Sunday night, the Jones' church quickly heard of Kyle's accident. A sign on
the door of the church read, "The Sunday Night service is canceled, Kyle Jones
has been struck by lightning. Please Pray." Members of the small congregation
made the trip to Atlanta to pray with Steven and Denise. Kyle's mom recalls that
every time they looked up from their prayers she saw more people from church standing
in the waiting room praying with them. Their regular Sunday night service had
become a time of intense prayer for a defenseless boy fighting for his life. Steven
had called his parents as soon as he reached the hospital. He knew he had to talk
to his father. "Dad always talked about walking daily with the Lord. I just wanted
my dad interceding for Kyle the way Jesus intercedes for us." Kyle miraculously
made it through that first critical night. But it seemed as if he were only hanging
on by a thread to his young life. Even his physical appearance began to change.
Steven and Denise recall the deep pain they felt watching their son suffer. "He
was swollen so much you really couldn't recognize him," Steven says. "I remember
looking him over and trying to find one part of his body that I could say, 'That's
my son.' And I couldn't do it." His mom remembers, "His lips were so swollen
around the air tube to his mouth that it looked like it was actually poked through
his cheek." Denise also recalls the fluids they were pumping into Kyle's body,
"It was gallons and gallons of fluids. And it just leaked out. He was on these
pads that would absorb it. They were constantly changing those pads. They had
to pump gallons of fluids into him so his kidneys wouldn't quit. It was awful."
Steven and Denise began to trade off shifts at the hospital. One of them
needed to be at home with Matthew while the other kept vigil with Kyle. Denise
knew that even if her son lived his chances for a full recovery were about zero
percent. She prayed as only a mother can: sad that her son was dying, broken that
there was nothing she could do. But in her prayers, she asked God for a sign of
hope. She desperately needed to know that her boy was going to be okay. Early
in the morning of the third day, Denise felt God gave her a sign. "About two in
the morning I was just praying with him and his eyes just opened a little bitty
slit. He responded to everything I asked him. He nodded and he would mouth things.
But they had a tube in his mouth so he couldn't speak. "The first thing
he mouthed was, 'Matthew.' I told him that his brother was fine. I told Kyle he'd
been hurt and asked if he remembered anything. He shook his head no. And I asked
him if he was in pain. And he shook his head that he wasn't. "He wanted
to know where Dad was. I told him, 'He would be in later.' I just told him he
had been hurt and not to worry about anything." With tears welling up in her eyes,
Denise remembers, "And I said, 'I love you. Go back to sleep.' And he mouthed,
'I love you Mom.'" "And then I just knew -- I knew he was going to be fine."
Denise was right: Her son would make it. But Kyle would face several serious
medical procedures. With so much of his skin tissue destroyed, the doctors had
to harvest healthy skin from Kyle's back to graft over the severely damaged areas
of his body. After the operation, a plastic wrap was literally stapled around
those areas to help hold the grafts in place and facilitate healing. The
young boy suffered through painful treatments that were necessary to help his
body heal. Wraps extended over the entire length of his body, from his toes all
the way up to his neck. But what an unbelievable recovery! Denise recalls
the doctors' initial diagnosis: "They said he probably would not survive. Then
they said that if he did, he would be in a drug-induced coma for several weeks
and would probably be in the hospital for up to a year." Unbelievably, Kyle was
in intensive care for only two weeks and was released from the hospital only four
weeks after his accident. Steven and Denise said the hospital staff was
tremendous. They were all pulling for Kyle and his recovery amazed the medical
professionals. But Kyle wasn't out of the woods yet. "Twice a day, my parents
would have to redo my wrappings," he says. "And that was really painful because
all the wounds were open and they would dry into the gauze. Then Mom and Dad would
have to rip it out and that was really painful." In addition, his eyes quickly
developed cataracts, a sign that his body had been electrocuted. So there were
other needed medical procedures over the following months. Today, Kyle
is in public high school and a member of the National Honor Society. He plays
the violin and runs track. Appropriately, his teammates call him "Flash." His
parents are quick to point out God's involvement in their ordeal. The ambulance
that took Kyle to the hospital was already in the area because of a false call.
They arrived on the scene in less than 4 minutes. The babysitter who gave
Kyle CPR right away had just finished a medical emergency refresher course for
an upcoming missions trip at her church. In the end, the trip never happened.
Steven and Denise feel God had prepared her specifically to be there to help their
son. The doctors said that the immediate help Kyle received was crucial
in his recovery. If the ambulance had arrived later or if CPR had not started
in minutes after the lightning strike, Kyle would not have made it. "They told
us another minute or two and Kyle would probably never have made it," Steven says.
"Another minute or two before they got his breathing and his heart going he would've
been dead." Kyle's body healed at an astonishingly rapid rate. When the
plastic wrap was removed from the large skin graft areas, the grafts were a 100%
successful-a rarity for a major skin graft procedure. Other areas that the doctors
were considering for additional skin graft work healed on their own. The
Joneses are also amazed at all of the love people gave to them. Local professional
sports figures, neighbors, friends from church, business and school acquaintances
all gave unbelievable support to the Jones family. Months of homecooked meals
were brought to the house. Money was donated to help with uncovered medical expenses.
Kyle's recovery was a total church and community effort. The day of the
accident, there had been a baby dedication at their church service that morning.
On their way home, Kyle and Matthew asked their father if they had been dedicated
as children. Steven told them they had both been dedicated to the Lord, not only
at church but also in the hospital. "I especially remember Matthew, just a couple
hours old and we prayed and said, 'Lord, he is Your child.' "When I saw
Kyle on the ground in the woods, it was an instant reminder of what we had talked
about in the car. All I said was, 'God, he is Your child and if You take him,
that's fine. If it's Your will to heal him, so be it.'" "I guess I see
God's love for me from a whole different perspective," Denise says. "It just means
something more to me now to think that He would give up His Son to pay for my
sins, because I almost lost my own son. I know how difficult it was to come to
the point to be able to say, 'He's not mine, God. He's Yours.' It makes me understand
God's sacrifice-and it makes me love Him that much more."
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"In The Hollow of His Hand" by The 700 Club's Gorman Woodfin.
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