Warner Robins — A Warner Robins man is considering himself very lucky after a lightning strike put him in the hospital.
Paul Llewellyn was struck while standing inside of his garage, smoking a cigarette. After his wife found him on the ground, he was rushed to the Houston Medical Center for his injuries.
"Is he dead?" said Lori Llewellyn, Paul's wife. "That was my first thought, because I didn’t know it could do that."
Luckily, the lightning only struck his left arm and that's where he has burn scars and blisters. Doctors at the Medical Center advised that he should go to a proper burn unit and offered to take him in an ambulance, but Llewellyn refused.
"They said my hand, the skin, and the muscles underneath could be dead because of shock," Llewellyn said. "And they wanted to transfer me to the burn center in Dublin or one of the areas around here, but I don’t have insurance, so I just pretty much signed myself out of the hospital."
It was a tough decision, but one that the Llewellyns felt they had to make.
"The only way to get his arm taken care of is if he goes to a burn unit, which we can’t afford to send him to, because, me, as a disabled veteran, makes too much in disability for him to qualify," Lori said.
The Llewellyns do have a young son, so for now, they're just happy Paul is alive.
"I’m lucky to be alive," Paul said. "It’s like a 90 percent chance you could die from it and I’m the 10 percent that lived."