Thalita Teixeira Padilla, 32, was struck by lightning last year — one year later, after a grueling recovery, she’s finally thinking about the future again

• Thalita Teixeira Padilla, 32, survived being struck by lightning while walking her dog in Boston on Sept. 9, 2023

• After spending over a year in hospitals as she recovered, Padilla was finally discharged last month

• Now back living in Connecticut, Padilla is telling her story of recovery in her own words, as told to PEOPLE’s Brian Brant

I don’t remember a lot about being struck by lightning, but I do remember what happened before and every day since.

Last September, I was about two months into my three-month nursing contract at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. I was still new to the Boston area and wanted to see what was around. On the morning of Sept. 9, having just worked a three-day shift, I Googled the closest beach and found one called Savin Hill Beach.

I have a very active Australian Shepard, and he loves the beach. But my husband – who is also a nurse – works the night shift and was sleeping, so he didn’t join.

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It was the end of summer and the beach was busy. I remember people playing volleyball and cornhole. There was music. It had been sunny, but the clouds soon rolled in and it began to drizzle.

After my dog went to the bathroom, we decided to head back to the car. As we walked, a woman stopped me to compliment my dog. Then I don’t remember anything else.

But what happened was I was struck by lightning in the chest, had a cardiac arrest, fell onto the concrete and was without oxygen for 15 minutes.

The lightning burned my chest and my spinal cord from the inside, leaving me with a spinal cord injury, something I didn’t find out about until three months after the incident. The bolt then came out of my right leg, my knee and foot. And I suffered a lot of nerve damage.

The leash between me and my dog also got burned and I later learned he ran away from the fear of the sound, which was so loud that it popped my eardrum. I still can’t hear anything out of that ear.

People that lived around the beach got together and launched a search party for my dog. Incredibly, he went about half a mile away and waited in the rain for eight hours. I’m so happy that he’s alive, and although I am wheelchair-bound with two ankles that are unable to move, I believe it’s a miracle how far I have come. 

But the recovery process was extensive. After being struck by lightning, I went straight to Boston Medical Center and was in the trauma ICU for a month. I was intubated and unable to talk for three weeks, so it was extremely grim. There were several times my family and friends didn’t think I was going to make it through the night.

My injuries affected my ability to do simple things like lifting my arms. I couldn’t even tie my own hair. I was very stubborn, so I didn’t want any help as I relearned how to bathe myself, brush my teeth – even how to text again.

I also had a tracheostomy so it took a month or two to eat again, and then another month to talk. In the beginning, I didn’t even have a voice.

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There were still small miracles that my husband later told me about. Despite what happened, I didn’t have any broken bones, a brain bleed or brain damage.

Forty days later, I was transferred to Spaulding Rehabilitation where I lived for another 40 days. I had physical therapy every day, and I actually thought they discharged me so quickly. I was like, “Are you guys sure you want to let me go out in the world?”

I wanted to hide and I didn’t feel like I was ready for all that.

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But today, I feel very blessed because I realize it could have been so much worse. I could have been paralyzed from the waist down, lost my sight or become deaf. But I still struggle with losing my ability to walk.

Being a nurse for five years, I was always on my feet. I was always doing something. So for as long as I can remember, all I worked towards was nursing, through school and through each struggle. For most of my twenties, that was my goal, and I finally got there. So when I woke up and realized I wasn’t going to be a bedside nurse anymore, I felt like I lost my identity, so I’ve had to learn that my identity is not my job.

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I’m hoping to finish off the year by prioritizing my health. I’m looking for a way to continue to help people. I might go back to school to become a nurse practitioner, which is something I always wanted to do, just maybe not at 32. I only started to think about my future for the first time last month. I feel like I didn’t even exist this year. My memory still takes me back to last year when I was walking.

Honestly, I was depressed and in so much pain. I didn’t even want to wake up in the morning because I felt pain all over, and it was nerve pain so nobody knew how to treat it or had ever seen it before. It was a very unique pain that I felt from my spinal cord injury. Fortunately, I’ve since stopped feeling that pain. Maybe my body just needed time.

You really never know what life is going to bring. What happened to me was a freak accident and it could have happened to anyone. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of that is God’s fault. That’s just life, and I’m finally getting a chance to rewrite my story.

If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.

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