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Published on: 8/8/2009
Last Visited: 8/8/2009
Kathleen Nelson
Sports Columnist Kathleen Nelson
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Kathleen Nelson
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
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More columns from Kathleen Nelson
Paramedics verified the lightning strike by showing her the exit wound in her leg, but the symptoms proved temporary.
By the end of the ambulance ride, she said, her vision was returning to a blur in her left eye.
An hour-and-a-half later, the black circle that blocked her right eye had all but disappeared and she had feeling in her arms and hands.
She spent Monday and Tuesday in the hospital, but the realization of how close she came to dying didn't come until Wednesday.
She thought about her brother, Chris, who died in a plane crash at age 21, when she was 16.
She thought of her brother, Rick, who remains partially paralyzed because of a car accident.
She remembered her parents' anguish in coping with those incidents.
"They've been through enough," she said.
"I apologized to my parents for nearly putting them through this again."
She thought of the volleyball team at St. Joe's.
"They could have been at my funeral this weekend," she said, "then would have had to start practice on Monday, dealing with that instead of volleyball."
She dwelt longest on her five children: Nick, 21, a senior at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland; Marcus, 19, a sophomore at Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Krista, 16, who plays volleyball and is an all-state runner at St. Joe's; Travis, 14, a freshman at Rockwood Summit, about to start his cross country career; and Melissa, a sixth-grader at Rockwood South, whom Terri coaches in volleyball.
"It really hit me how I wanted to be around for them," she said.
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