![]() In the middle of the night, she would startle her husband, Achilles, yelping in her sleep and grabbing at her feet.Ī doctor specializing in nerves told her that six months would be an important milestone. She had worked through so much in the months since. For being anything other than grateful on days when she felt angry and exhausted. Guilt for not thinking of them as soon as she woke up every morning in her D.C. She was plagued with guilt for surviving when the others - a couple celebrating their 56th wedding anniversary and a young banker from California - did not. Her emotional recovery from the trauma was equally daunting. Surging up through her foot, it fried her nervous system, stopped her heart and burned gaping holes in her body. It made her watch so hot, it melted flesh on her wrist. The lightning strike blew up her electronic tablet. Her doctors called it a miracle that she survived the millions of volts of electricity that coursed through her body. It had been 174 days since lightning struck a tree across from the White House, where Amber and three others were sheltering from the Aug. “Sometimes, the slightest thing will set them off,” she said, gingerly tapping her foot. The 28-year-old fundraiser eased into her fuzzy black-and-white slippers to get ready for a doctor’s appointment, and with each step, her feet felt like giant blisters threatening to pop under pressure. She woke up, like most mornings, in pain.Īs Amber Escudero-Kontostathis lay in bed, it felt like someone was taking a razor-thin scalpel and delicately slicing into her legs. © 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc.Deep Reads features The Washington Post’s best immersive reporting and narrative writing. “Like I’m normal, just any other student.” “It went so well,” she told the Washington Post after her first class, laughing with relief. ![]() In January, she started her second semester - without a walker - and didn’t have to answer other students’ questions about her condition or the now notorious lightning strike. Just three weeks after she was released from the hospital, Escudero-Kontostathis began her dream graduate program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “It’s not going to stop me from what I’m supposed to do,” she told the Washington Post. ![]() That doubt used to send her into a spiral of despair, but it no longer controls her, she said. I feel pressure pushing up on the box, but nothing else.”Įscudero-Kontostathis has been making progress during physical therapy sessions but it’s unclear if she will ever live a pain-free life. “It’s like I’m floating on a box on my tailbone. “I still have no feeling from the lower part of my back to my upper thigh, so I can’t sense where my legs are going,” she said. Lightning strike near White House leaves 3 dead, 1 injured Still, the fundraiser, who was working near the park that day, did not make it out unscathed, according to the newspaper. In half a second, a lightning bolt struck that tree sending roughly 950 million volts of electricity down its trunk, through the ground and back up into the bodies of the four bystanders, the Washington Post reported.Įscudero-Kontostathis was the only one to survive. The lone survivor of the lightning strike that killed three people near the White House last summer opened up about her long road to recovery after the August bolt stopped her heart for 13 minutes.Īmber Escudero-Kontostathis, 28, ran for cover with three others under a tree in Lafayette Square park when rain began pouring down on Aug. Video shows terrifying moment lightning strikes beach - killing two people as it travels up sand Woman hit by lightning while walking her dog day before Beyoncé concert recounts miracle recovery: ‘I died’ Hawaiian Airlines flight struck by lightning with 278 on board, diverted back to Vegas as scared passengers were ‘crying’īible-loving Florida teen killed by lightning while hunting with her dad
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