March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Support group helps victims adjust to life after electrical shock

Before the lightning struck, Charlotte Organes was an active woman with a young family, her own nursery school, a part-time job, and a seat on several committees in her hometown of Steuben.

Today, nearly a year after the electricity coursed through her body, she says she continues to suffer from a variety of illnesses that baffle some doctors, make others skeptical, and threaten to ruin her life.

Organes, 43, is plagued daily by painful muscle spasms. She has trouble concentrating and her memory has become aggravatingly spotty. Drinking two or three gallons of water a day does not quench her unrelenting thirst.

Frequent mild dizzy spells disorient her; she sometimes feels as if she will float right out of her body. The most severe spells cause her to faint.

Doctors have no answers, and at least one neurologist said her ailments were psychologically induced. Two psychiatrists have offered support, but can give no clue to the medical mystery that haunts her.

Organes, emotionally distraught and physically debilitated, said she is desperate to find out what happened to her that spring day.

“It makes you think you’re going absolutely crazy,” Organes said recently. “For the longest time I didn’t tell anyone about it. Later I couldn’t talk about it without crying. I still have a hard time.”

Organes was at work on April 10 when the lightning hit. She was standing in an office, talking on a cordless phone. Three or four of her co-workers were nearby.

“I can’t remember what was happening outside on that day, but the people with me told me there was lightning and thunder going on,” Organes said. “They said they heard a loud crack and a snap, and they saw a blue flash come out of a heat vent a few feet over my head.”

Witnesses told Organes that the flash leaped from the vent to the telephone she was holding. The impact jolted her body. Organes dropped into a chair, reeling and shaking. She could not speak and began turning blue.

“It was really strange,” she said. “I can remember seeing myself in that chair from above. I don’t know if I was conscious or unconscious. I couldn’t breathe. The pain in my chest was unbelievable. I felt tingly all over. It crossed my mind that I was dying.”

A co-worker took Organes to a doctor, who could find nothing wrong. Organes returned to the office, although she remembers nothing about the rest of the day. That night, her ribs and chest muscles began to ache again. Breathing became difficult. She thought she was having a heart attack.

“I went back to the doctor shortly after and he said if you are hit by lightning you either die or you don’t. If you don’t, you’re fine,” Organes said.

But she did not feel fine. The muscle spasms and dizziness increased. Her skin crawled and her body sometimes flushed with heat. Despite the pain, she continued to work one day a week for a several weeks until her condition became unmanageable.

“I just couldn’t cope, I couldn’t remember anything,” she said. “I don’t even remember Christmas day and my children opening their presents. I turn on the stove and forget to turn it off, or forget how to turn on the washer. I drop things. Sometimes I say things backwards. It’s as if someone switched bodies on me when I wasn’t looking.”

An electroencephalogram, which traces variations in the electric forces of the brain, revealed no evidence of epilepsy or any other neurological disorder. Organes’ new doctor admits that he doesn’t know enough about the damaging effects of lightning to determine what is wrong.

“My husband doesn’t complain, but it’s been really hard on him,” Organes said. “My children are handling it well, too, although it hurts them that I can’t be involved in their school functions the way I used to.”

With no insurance and thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills, Organes said she no longer can afford specialists and expensive tests. She is presently in court, trying to get worker’s compensation for her accident.

Although she has yet to find relief for her physical pain and disorientation, Organes said she recently discovered a support group in North Carolina that has helped her to understand that she is not suffering alone.

“It was just so important to talk with people who have the same symptoms as me, and to know I wasn’t going crazy.” she said.

Steve Marshburn formed Lightning Strike and Electrical Shock Victims International three years ago, to bring attention to the baffling condition he has lived with since 1969. The group now lists about 140 members, he said, with 200 applications pending.

Lee Trevino, the professional golfer, became a charter member after being struck on a golf course years ago. Several other members were hit on golf courses, Marshburn said. Others were zapped at train and bus stops, in their backyards, while playing in fields. Two members became paraplegics as they walked out to get their mail. A few, like Organes and Marshburn, were hit while they were inside buildings.

Two members died last year without learning the cause of their prolonged affliction.

“The most rewarding part is getting calls from people all over saying, `I’m so glad I found you’ “, Marshburn said in a soft drawl. “They can talk with anyone on our list. It really helps. The hardest part is not being believed, I can tell you.”

Marshburn was an assistant vice president of a North Carolina bank when he was struck. Like Organes, he had to rely on his co-workers for the details about the freak accident.

The bank was busy that November afternoon, so Marshburn helped out by operating one of the teller windows. The drive-through window was at his back. Except for a single dark cloud, the sky was clear. With a loud crack, the lightning bolt hit the drive-through window, passed through the speaker, and entered Marshburn’s back and head. It moved from his brain to his groin and exited through his right hand and right foot. In a spray of sparks, the electrical force blew out the tacks in the heel of his shoe.

Marshburn was semiconscious. Unable to speak, he was carried to a local doctor, who did not know what to do. From that day on, Marshburn spent his lunch hours on a sofa in the bank, nursing his painful back. His memory became faulty, he could not hold food in his stomach, and he suffered from dizzy spells and nervousness.

Co-workers thought he was acting to get sympathy, he said. The bank urged him not to talk publicly about the accident. Only his wife and children believed him — everyone else, including his mother and father, thought Marshburn was faking. Eventually, he began to think he was losing his mind.

In 1988, after being passed up for several promotions, he was fired by the bank. He has undergone surgery 15 times over the years for prostate cancer and assorted ills.

In the absence of medical knowledge about his condition, doctors simply have told him he suffers from “Lightning Syndrome.”

“We have documentation dating back to 1483, but so little is known about this,” Marshburn said. “I went 16 years from doctor to doctor who didn’t know what to do. Orthopedic doctors, arthritis specialists, neurologists. They know the body has been damaged, but they don’t know how. I think it’s an area of medicine that’s been avoided.”

Marshburn said he hopes the support group will bring together case histories from around the world for the first time. There are plans for a book, which Washburn thinks could benefit doctors who might be interested in researching the illness.

He and other victims shared their stories on a recent National Geographic TV special called “Lightning Strikes.” One member spoke on the Oprah Winfrey show, and others actively counsel new victims by phone or letter.

For people like Organes, however, the group’s most important function has been to offer her the first glimpse of hope in a year of pain, confusion and desperation.

“I really feel like it saved my life,” Organes said. “It makes me wonder how many others are out there facing this alone and have no idea where to turn.”


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