May 8th, 2019 4:53 AM

If you haven't yet read Drew Magary's account of the medical emergency that knocked him out literally you should because he's a terrific writer. For those of us die-hard Magary fans the months he spent away from the keyboard due to a mysterious and obviously serious injury, was a quiet and dark time. But nowhere near  the amount of quiet and dark he and his family were experiencing.

By no means do I want to equate Magary's experience with what David and I went through earlier this month. It will never compare but will in the sense that, like Magary, it was a moment when the lights went out and as humans we all experience such moments.

About 12 hours before the Texas sky brought down the thunder I looked out the back door and told our cat Barney: "There's a storm coming!" I told him because I freaking hate thunderstorms and I have to tell someone (even if that someone is not a someone but a cat) in an effort to calm myself. All weather unnerves me to the point where I won't even leave the house if there is a single rain cloud waaaaaay off in the distance.

I've gotten better about it but thunderstorms with frequent lightning are not forces I reckon with because they will kill you, set your house on fire, or do any number of awful things my General Anxiety Disorder, (GAD) dreams up. My irrational imagination has even made me scared of every single common home appliance.

So there I was half-asleep in bed listening to far-off thunder while congratulating myself on how slow my heartbeat was when usually I'm in an active panic attack all day, everyday when BANG! The room went orange and black in front of my closed eyes, I shot up in bed and started to scream because I knew, I knew, I knew that was a direct hit.You sunk my battleship! Penetration! Critical hit! Track hit! One of our tracks is damaged! Bailout! This vehicle has had it! (soundbites if you can handle the monotony)

David grabbed me and told me I was okay to stop the screaming. It was nice of him. He's normally a: "Go back to sleep. It's nothing." sort of guy but even he knew this time was different. After a about a minute I said: "We have to get up and check the house." Catastrophes are what I've been envisioning all my GAD,OCD life (please see hotel fire for more information) and I knew the most common threat after a lightning strike is an attic fire.

I headed to my cell phone in the living room and David turned down the hall to check on his computer. Our laundry area shares a not-fire safe door (previous home owner never installed one/refused to at sale) with the garage. I peeked out its window and noticed the garage light was on as were several other lights in the house. The lightning was like a ghost, turning off lights and turning others on when it wanted. I noticed some more light in there and turned away but turned back because the light was flickering. Thinking it odd but probably just my imagination  I opened the door to see a foot high flame coming off our water heater.

Though a fire extinguisher was inches away from me by the door, I slammed that sucker shut, and yelled: "David, the water heater is on fire!"  I took off to the opposite end of the house to call 911 and David, not far behind me, put the fire out with that handy extinguisher. He said later that he went a little overboard, emptying the entire extinguisher and getting that chemical dust stuff everywhere. I refuse to think there is such a thing as "overboard" when putting out a fire.

That was 4:53 AM on May, 8th. I know because cell phones keep track of that info for us. I know the duration of the call to 911 as I told them as calmly as I could but whimpering: "There are two adults in the house and a cat. The fire is out! It's out! My husband put it out! David, is it out? You're still going to send someone, right?" I corralled Barney into his bag and we waited for our God-given, tax paying right to emergency services.

The fire department arrived turned off the gas slowly seeping out, checked our attic, walls, and entire house for the simmering rage of that strike. Their thermometers showed our house was cold. After they left our fire department would provide mutual aid for at least one more lightning strike house that had an attic fire. We were fortunate. Our fire was minor but to a home owner a gas fire is still terrifying.

We will never actually know how the lightning entered the house or if it was a direct strike. We roamed from room to room like zombies mumbling to ourselves trying to work it out. To the best of our knowledge it could have struck a power pole in the backyard and came in through the internet data cable. Really all we can tell you is what the lightning took:

The internet data cable, the modem, the router, hit a surge protector bounced into David's office took out his network card, the printer, a surge protector in there, his computer's speakers, nightlights, half the lightbulbs in our hallway, the stove/oven range hood, anything plugged into the bottom half of the outlets in our bedroom (an alarm clock and electric razor) and the finally, its big farewell, hit the water heater, igniting after blowing holes in the gas flex pipe.

Pictured is the largest hole. On closer inspection I could see bubbling and pinpricks where others were forming along the pipe. My guess is left to burn the whole pipe would have eventually been eaten away or melted open.

It took from me too. The plumbers installed a new water heater that same day (replacing the one they had just installed in October of 2018) and were also extremely kind  because another storm had rolled in. I'd wander out to check-in and flinch every time there was a thunder clap.They would pause and ask if I was okay. I told them I was and knew it was going to take some time to trust the weather, trust the house again.

After they left, I paused in an attempt to slow everything down. I sat in the middle of the floor unable to touch anything, plug anything in, or leave the house. I knew I needed to leave the house and buy a new fire extinguisher but the GAD wasn't having it. 

My agoraphobia was also in full swing and in my head was a loop: "I can't leave the house because what if something happens when I'm gone but I can't stay in the house because the house isn't safe. I need to keep my house safe but the house isn't safe. I'm not safe in the house but I need the house to save me from the outside."

Then there was Barney. I couldn't leave him but he couldn't go to the store with me. I sat like that for an

Barney on a happier day.

hour. I decided to take him with me. Then at the store I sat in the car for 30 minutes debating whether or not to take him in and to explain why my bag was howling.

For three days I was out of my mind. Every noise would make me jump five feet. Anything electrical that buzzed after the strike had to be replaced because the sound put me on alert. I couldn't be in the garage unless someone else was with me because I'd begin to feel sick seeing the fire in my head all over again.

I was holding it together so I could work with the insurance company and all the techs but after about 24 hours I couldn't talk about it without stuttering, then holding back tears, then trying not to vomit as reality sunk in: we could have died. We could have died and taken the neighborhood with us. But we didn't. We were lucky. We were lucky we were home and had the common sense to get out of bed.

All bets are off with lightning. It does what it wants like wildfires and tornadoes it spares one house, jumping to another to reduce that one to rubble. Lightning takes the path of least resistance which that morning was our house. It happened to be"our turn" that morning. We have a "lightning house" now which means whenever something electrical goes wacky we'll chalk it up to the lightning. There's not much we can do to prevent future disasters: natural or medical. Disasters happen suddenly like the tag on Magary's post explains they are simply part of "Life's Rich Pageant."