Teenager faces long recovery after being struck by lightning

SALT LAKE CITY — One of the teenagers hospitalized last week after a lightning strike in Sevier County is now back home.

Kaileigh Saling, 15, was among a group of young people hiking Thursday as part of the Saline Stake Trek of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“We all started our walk, and it was raining really, really hard,” Kaileigh said. “We could hear the thunder and see the lightning, but it was raining really hard.”

That's when lightning struck nearby.

“The person on the other side of the person in the middle of us was holding an umbrella and so we think the umbrella somehow attracted the lightning and the lightning entered the umbrella or near the umbrella,” Kaileigh said.

50 children reported feeling the shock of the lightning. Kaileigh believes she and one other person were the most affected.

“It was just weird, like my body was tingling and it was really, really weird, like I was being held on this cloud and it was like I was in the air and then I just kind of passed out,” Kaileigh said.

She told FOX 13 News Wednesday that she regained consciousness within a minute.

“Someone lifted my head and it felt like all these bricks and gravity were coming down on me,” Kaileigh said.

Kaileigh said she was taken by ambulance to a parking lot in Salina. There she was flown to Primary Children's Hospital in Lehi.

She said doctors examined her to make sure she had no lightning injuries. She was eventually taken to a hospital in Salt Lake City.

“She has nerve damage on the right side of her body, so her arm and leg are tingling, numb or hurting, she has a lot of pain, especially in her arm,” said Rachel Saling, Kaileigh’s mother. “The fractures are in her L5 S1.”

Rachel says her daughter also suffered a concussion as a result of the incident and fractures to the L5-S1 ligaments in her back.

Looking ahead, she says Kaileigh's recovery will take some time.

“In a few months the neurologist will do a test if there has been no improvement to see if anything is permanent, but we hope that over time things will improve,” Rachel said.

“I still have a few months, maybe even years, to be able to do things the way I used to,” Kaileigh added.

Kaileigh says she was released from the hospital on Sunday.

She currently wears a lumbar corset and is undergoing physical and occupational therapy.

“I want this done as quickly as possible, as fast as possible and as well as possible,” Kaileigh said.

Back home and on the mend, Kaileigh is grateful that this incident wasn't much worse.

“It was scary, but at the same time I was like, at least it didn't hit anyone and at least it didn't kill us all,” Kaileigh said.

FOX 13 News reached out to the Sevier County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday to see if all of the teens had been released from the hospital. We have not heard back at this time.