Struck by Lightning

Survivor stories:

About 70 percent of lightning-strike victims are afflicted with a bizarre collection of disorders that remain almost a total mystery to medical science. LeDoux, like most survivors, has a terrible short-term memory. "I would've been able to hide my own Easter eggs and not find them," he says. "I lose days, sometimes a whole week." He is easily distracted and often fatigued and has gone through spates of depression. "That first year when they told me I'd never be able to work again, I took a gun and put it to my head and pulled the trigger," he says. "But you know what? I forgot to load it."