On Oct. 1, a bolt of lightning directly hit Lara Eustermann, instantly burning her body and stopping her heart.

She was, essentially, dead.

Now, one month later, comes an update neither doctors nor her family expected.

"Out of nowhere, one bolt crack just got her - right on the top of her head," said Lara’s husband, John.

Her mother made a frantic call to dispatch.

Dispatcher: "911?"

Kathy Larsen: "My daughter, she's just been struck by lightning."

Her heart, stopped.

Dispatcher: "Can you start CPR?"

Larsen: "Yes, I have, but I think she's gone, my baby's gone."

For two weeks, the mother of 4 clinged to life in the intensive care unit.

Then, a medical miracle.

"Well, I should buy a lottery ticket," said Eustermann.

Eustermann defied the odds.  She doesn't remember the lightning strike - nor the week preceding it. She does remember waking up from her coma, two weeks later.

"My husband talked to me and said that I had been struck by lightning, that I had died, that my mother had brought me back to life and that I had been hospitalized for a couple of weeks,” she said. "I looked at him and I said ‘BS’ and then he showed me my legs and it sort of made sense."

Paul Boehlke/KTVB

Eustermann's legs are marked with burns around her ankles nearly a month later

The electrical force left its mark from head to toe -- inside and out.  Lara's legs are burned.  Her head is healing from what's believed to be the exit wound, where the lightning left her body.  Beyond the surface scars there is deeper damage.

"I can move everything on my body, but I can't use it appropriately, so it's mostly muscle weakness,” she said. “My nerves aren't sending the right messages to my muscles."

Lara is technically a paraplegic. She has to retrain her muscles, nerves and brain to communicate again. It's an agonizingly slow and painful process.

"It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life,” she said.

But "life" is the operative word.  Something neither Lara nor her family take for granted.

Paul Boehlke/KTVB

It is believed the lightning exited Eustermann's body through the top of her head, leaving exit wounds behind.

"We're so grateful that Lara is really back with us,” Larsen said. “It's wonderful to see the progress she's making. It's great." 

Lara's mother is credited with saving her life.  In the midst of chaos -- with Lara's two youngest boys at her side -- Larsen performed CPR on her dying daughter.

"That had to have been horrific for her, “ Eustermann said. “I am so thankful to my mother, she gave me life twice.”

"Well, certainly it was helpful I was there, but I can't help but feel there was a lot of divine providence involved as well, guiding me," Larsen said.

"I think there's a reason I'm still here. I'm not sure what it is yet,” Eustermann said.

But she is sure about one thing, that she will struggle and strain through the pain of therapy trying to regain the physical being she once was.  Trying to get well and get home, to relish what was once considered the little things in life and is now seen as the very essence of life.

“The worst part is not being at home and - although it's great - neighbors and friends taking my kids to the zoo and the park and I can't be there… and I'm grateful to them all, but I want it to be me,” she said.

"The best part of this story is I realize how much I miss that and that I need to slow down my life, which I'm doing. I'm just going to be mom for a while instead of trying to be everything else."

Doctors are optimistic Lara will be spending Thanksgiving with her family in her Boise home.