After being struck by a bolt of lightning Friday afternoon while trying to save a backyard gazebo from blowing away, Kanabec County resident Kent Lilyerd will be the first to tell you he’s lucky to be alive.

"It started to pick up with me on it, all 350 pounds," Lilyerd said two days later while re-creating Friday's events in the backyard of his Jade Street home. "It started to tip, and when it got to about 45 (degrees) me and this gazebo just went - whoosh - for a parasail ride. Then, turning in the air still holding on to this thing, 'bam' - a bolt of lighting just came in and hit me right on the coconut."

Lilyerd remembers very little from that point on – mostly just bits and pieces of the next 24 hours. Partially paralyzed and covered in mosquitoes, Lilyerd was somehow able to drag himself about 50 feet to a rear entry doorway - where his wife Jana, a nurse at Kanabec Hospital, found her husband and rushed to call 911.

"It must have been just instinct," Lilyerd said. "I have no idea how I did it. I think I just knew that if I didn’t get help I wasn’t going to make it."