Lightning strikes man in his mouth for smoking

Doctors found the man lying on the floor unconscious. His body was being twisted with cramps due to a cranial injury caused by the strike

Smoking can be extremely dangerous during a thunderstorm. A man ended up in hospital when lightning struck him in the mouth shortly after he took a puff on his cigarette.

Dmitry and his girlfriend Masha were at a dacha near the city of Vologda. They saw a new day breaking through the heavy clouds. It was 7 o'clock in the morning and a thunderstorm was raging outside. Dmitry opened the window and lit up a cigarette. Then lighting struck him in the mouth. It went through his body from head to toe. Dmitry's heart stopped beating after the strike and he had apparent death. A minute's delay might have caused brain death. Resuscitation would have been useless in that case.

“Cardiac massage and artificial respiration should be performed urgently in such a case,” says Boris Semiyenov, a resuscitation ward doctor of a city hospital. It is a wonder that Dmitry's girlfriend Masha hit the nail on the head under the circumstance. Having recovered her consciousness after the strike, she began performing cardiac massage and artificial respiration on the victim. Then she grabbed her cell phone called an ambulance.

The doctors found the victim lying on the floor. He was unconscious, his body was being twisted with cramps due to a cranial injury caused by the strike. He was in a very grave state. The doctors took urgent measures for saving the man's life. They injected the victim with anti-shock medicines and took him to hospital. His face and hair were scorched, lightning left a mark on his body, a red line about 3 cm wide was stretching from his throat down to his feet. Dmitry remained unconscious for 24 hours in the hospital.

The young man opened his eyes one day after. He was able to answer doctors' questions in a simple way. He felt even better on the following day. Nothing threatens his life now but he has to spend more time in hospital for complete recovery.

“So far we have not found any damage done by lighting strike to Dmitry's internal organs yet it is hard to predict the consequences,” says Mr. Semiyenov. Masha also had to be admitted to hospital. She spent two days in a neurosurgical ward of a local hospital. “She was so glad to know that her boyfriend was alive,” says a ward nurse.

Boris Semiyenov treated more than ten victims of lightning strikes during his 24-year-long medical career. All the victims were in the open air when lightning struck them. All of them survived the attack of heavenly electricity.