Kalyn Slebodnik's life changed forever in 1991 as she spoke on the phone. The effects of that day, often misunderstood, continue to trouble her.
By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published June 14, 2004
[Times photo: Jeff Klinkenberg]
Lightning struck Kalyn Slebodnik through a telephone more than a decade ago. She still has frequent seizures and other problems. Her dog, Magic, alerts the family when a storm is brewing.
ORLANDO - It is too early in the day for the usual earth-quaking thunderstorms that batter Central Florida in June, but Magic acts nervous even in the calm weather. Magic is Kalyn Slebodnik's dog, a black Australian shepherd that seldom leaves her side.
Magic, also known as Wonder Dog, often senses when something bad - such as a lightning storm or worse - is about to happen. When Magic barks seemingly without reason, when he starts sniffing her frantically, Slebodnik has to fight her own anxiety.
"I'm okay," Slebodnik tells Magic. "I'm okay."
Slebodnik, 45, who is often angry and frightened and depressed, is fibbing. She doesn't feel okay. As she rests on the living room couch in the dark, her head throbs and her mind reels. She tries to avoid eye contact with her clairvoyant dog.
May was a bad month. Slebodnik had a dozen seizures, according to her calendar, some small but a few grand mals that knocked her off her feet. She first turned rigid as a plank and then shook uncontrollably when her muscles contracted.
When a grand mal happens, everybody in her house springs into action. Her son A.J., 13, races for one of the many alarm buttons situated all over the house. Ringing the bell summons son Brian, 16, with his mother's bottle of pills. If husband Michael is home, he bear hugs his wife until she stops shaking. Afterward she has a horrific headache, a dry mouth, confusion, depression. All she wants to do is sleep forever.
And now another summer has arrived. A flash of lightning in the distance is a reminder of what began her drama more than a decade ago.
One moment she was talking on the phone. The next she was sprawled across the floor on the other side of the room.
"The whitest white'
In Florida, we all know how it is from the middle of June through the middle of October. Balmy morning is followed by steamy afternoon. In the distance, lazy clouds pile up like ravioli on a plate. By 4 o'clock, the clouds have grown into yellow and purple bruises. We can't see the cloud tops; they have disappeared into the stratosphere. Lightning flashes. If we hear thunder before we can count to 30, we know the storm is uncomfortably close.
If we are on the golf course we skedaddle to the clubhouse. If we are fishing in a boat we head for the marina. If we're on the phone, we say goodbye. For most of us, Armageddon isn't around the corner, even though it may look that way. The storm passes, often in a matter of minutes. By dusk we are grilling hamburgers.
That day, in August 1991, the storm arrived at dusk. Kalyn was working the front desk at a hotel in Orlando. Her job entailed telephoning guests who had checked in earlier, asking if their rooms were satisfactory.
The Holiday Inn had 300 rooms so her phone finger was getting a workout at the main switchboard. "This is Kalyn on the front desk," she would announce cheerfully. "I am calling to see if you have everything you need."
The storm outside was ugly even by a veteran Floridian's standards. Sheets of rain blew horizontally past the windows. Lightning illuminated the lobby followed immediately by the crack of thunder. The storm was directly overhead.
In an average Florida year, Zeus flings 1.3-million bolts from his Mount Olympus, making our state the lightning capital of the United States , according to the weather service. Of course, most lightning menaces nothing but water, trees and the occasional computer or television. Even so, about 10 Floridians are killed every summer, and about 40 injured, more than in any other state.
Kalyn, sitting on a metal chair, held the phone against her left ear. The fingers of her right hand flipped through files in a metal cabinet. Her right foot and leg were wrapped around the leg of the metal chair. She had no dog then, no Magic the Wonder Dog, to warn her about what would shortly happen.
Later, when people asked what it was like to be hit by lightning through a telephone, she would tell them what she could still remember:
"I saw the whitest white you can imagine, a color so white it was blinding. The noise I heard at the same time, an explosion, was deafening. But it wasn't like it was coming from the outside and that I was hearing it, exactly. It was like it was all inside my head, between my ears, and trying to get out."
"Like a rag doll'
Probably because the electricity had to go through the phone lines, Kalyn wasn't killed. She wasn't burned like some who have experienced a 10-million volt strike, and she wasn't knocked out. When she tells her story she remembers mostly the confusion.
"I'm just lying against the wall with my arms and legs stretched out like I'm a rag doll. I'm feeling kind of peaceful, actually, just looking around. Gradually, my ears start working. I'm hearing, "Areyouallrightallrightallright?' Everybody is leaning over me trying to find out if I'm all right."
She didn't immediately answer. When she replied she said she would be okay after a little rest. Nobody called an ambulance as far as she can remember. Instead, colleagues carried her to a cot in a back room. Later, she reported back to the front desk, shaken but ready for work. She drove herself home after midnight.
By the time she got home, her head hurt and her hands tingled. Same with her right foot, the one that had rested on a metal chair.
Michael took his wife to the emergency room. Kalyn remembers telling the doctor what happened. She also remembers the doctor telling her that it was impossible to be struck by lightning while talking on the telephone.
Perhaps the doctor misunderstood Kalyn, or perhaps Kalyn misunderstood the doctor, or perhaps the doctor was misinformed. But in fact it is entirely possible to be hurt by lightning while talking on a grounded telephone, that is, a telephone that is plugged into the wall. It is also possible to be hurt by lightning while taking a shower. It is possible to be hurt while standing next to a window inside a building.
Kalyn and Michael went home, not quite knowing what to think.
Their lives have never been the same.
An invisible visitor
Months passed. A year. Another year. The headaches were bad enough. Same with memory lapses and thoughts that swung through her consciousness like a monkey on a vine. But what terrified her more than anything was the talking raccoon.
She'd be at the front desk just like always, doing her job just like always. A guest would amble over for a chat. Out of the corner of her eye, she'd see the raccoon slip in a side door and walk her away. She would try to focus on the nice guest who needed her help. Lounging on the counter next to her, the raccoon interjected remarks of his own.
And the guest didn't react! My God! Was the guest blind?
She went to the doctor. She went to many doctors, who ordered tests that discovered nothing of consequence. Then they would start all over again. Like so many confused and sad lightning strike victims, Kalyn didn't initially connect her problems with that bolt from above.
She began having seizures, small ones at first, then scarier ones, sometimes at work. She'd go home and sleep. Although she loved cooking, she was too tired to fix a meal.
Medicines filled her bathroom cabinet to bursting. Medicines often have unpleasant side effects. They may decrease the libido or promote weight gain or cause diarrhea. They can make the mouth dry or make you sleepy.
Some old friends got sick of Kalyn's complaints. A few others wondered if she were faking an illness just for the attention. She grew sadder by the day and had to see a shrink.
Another summer, with a Florida summer's weather, rolled around again. Slebodnik lay in her bed in the dark even in the middle of the day, wondering if she were losing her mind.
She's not alone
Lots of people telephone or e-mail Steve Marshburn in North Carolina and tell him they are losing their minds. They tell him they can't understand what has happened to them. And he says, "I know. I know. You aren't crazy. You just got hit by lightning is all."
It happened to him in 1969. A bank teller, he was working at the drive-through window when lightning struck. Electricity raced through the microphone and broke his back.
Even after his back healed, he walked stooped over like an old man. Then came the seizures, memory loss, despair. He couldn't add or subtract and do his job. Couldn't drive a car.
In 1989 he started a support group, Lightning Strike and Electric Shock Survivors International, to help other victims. Today the organization has 1,400 members. About 10 percent are Floridians.
Seventeen times, by his count, he has talked survivors out of suicide.
"There is a lot of baggage that comes with this," he tells people. "Most people have no idea what we go through. If you've survived, they assume you're fine. Nothing could be farther from the truth."
Marshburn, 59, is devoutly religious. He counts his blessings.
"I've had 31 surgeries, but I'm alive, I'm vertical most of the time, and I am capable of helping other people. That's what gets me through."
Every summer, Marshburn's group holds an annual convention. That's where he met Kalyn, who had learned about him through the Internet. She is helping Marshburn organize this summer's convention, which begins June 23 at the Downtown Embassy Suites Hotel in Orlando.
A few years ago, Slebodnik attended her first convention and met a doctor, Nelson Hendler, who runs the Mensana Clinic in Maryland. Among other things, he is one of the few physicians in the United States who specializes in treating electric shock and lightning victims. Slebodnik and her husband drove from Florida to the clinic.
"Most doctors never see a lightning victim," Hendler says. "If the patient is burned, okay, they know how to treat burns. But often the injury is to the brain or nerve cells. If the injury is bad enough, the body can't repair itself and things get worse over time. The main thing is that doctors don't ask the right questions and don't do the right tests." Hendler ordered a battery of tests. He found damage to Slebodnik's temporal lobe.
"You have brain damage," he told her.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!," shouted Slebodnik. "I'm not crazy."
An uncertain future
"Get the ball, Magic!" Slebodnik calls out. Playing catch with a tennis ball is their daily exercise. Magic has more energy than she does.
Slebodnik sees a psychiatrist and a neurologist every month. They are still fine-tuning her medicines. She takes seven different drugs for everything from seizures to depression to headaches to restless leg syndrome. Her husband recently lost his job, and they pay $800 a month, more than their mortgage, for temporary medical insurance.
"I don't know what is going to happen," she says while lying on the couch. "I've had more seizures this year than any other year. That can't be good. Maybe they'll figure things out. Maybe they won't."
Sometimes she takes out her scrapbook and looks at the pictures. The book contains photos and news clippings from a long time ago, when she was a girl, growing up in Miami. At Coral Gables High, she starred in school plays. At the University of Tennessee, she was a liberal arts major who performed in plays and sang and danced. After college, she returned to Miami and kept her hand in the theater, acted in a couple of Shakespeare productions, including The Tempest. In scrapbook photographs, she is slender and beautiful. All her hopes and dreams are in her eyes.
Magic puts his wet nose in the middle of the scrapbook. She pushes him off. He starts barking again. Probably it's nothing.
-Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at 727 893-8727 or klink@sptimes.com
To learn more
For more information on Lightning Strike and Electric Shock Survivors International, call 910 346-4708 or visit the Internet site, www.lightning-strike.org
Lightning tips
If lightning is near, stay inside a building and avoid the windows. Get off the phone and get out of the shower. A golf-course shelter without walls, or taking refuge under a tree, is dangerous. A car with a metal roof is safe provided you don't touch anything metal in the vehicle. If caught in the open, hunker low. Don't put your hands and feet on the ground at the same time.
