A life-threatening electrocution nearly took this Estes Park woman’s hands. It didn’t take her will to climb again.

The smell of burning flesh was so potent Adam Strong had to roll down the windows Hands that once navigated rock faces that specific boulderers could only dream of challenging were now black and smoldering Melissa Strong looked at them and yelled at her husband that she didn t have hands anymore Doing his best to keep her calm as he raced toward the hospital Adam assured her that she still did Then Melissa s thoughts went to her passion I will never climb again she wailed Adam didn t have a response And neither did the EMT at the hospital as Melissa was having her clothes cut off and her body hooked up to IVs I knew the EMT there and I looked at him and questioned the same question Will I ever climb again ' Melissa recalled And as soon as I disclosed those words I knew how unfair of a question that was I followed it up with You don t have to answer that ' It took weeks in the hospital months of rehabilitation and a will to keep pushing forward but Melissa eventually unveiled the answer to that question She wrote a book about her journey titled Climbing Through A Story of Grit Healing Second Chance which is set to be published by Falcon Guides in One of her main takeaways We all have certain scar tissue we are dealing with The the bulk considerable moment of my life If not for a tripped breaker Melissa Strong would have died that day in her Estes Park driveway back in Strong was burning artistic runnels into wood furniture to be used at the restaurant she planned to open Employing a technique called fractal burning Strong rigged a -volt microwave transformer with mini jumper cables as leads to burn the wood But in a moment of distraction Strong forgot she left the transformer running and grabbed the live leads with both hands What followed was a life-changing -second-long electrocution that torched her hands I tried to scream but couldn t tried to shake my hands free from the leads but couldn t tried to fall over but couldn t Strong recalled That s when I disclosed to myself Oh expletive I m dying LEFT Melissa Strong lays in a hospital bed with her hands wrapped and elevated after being electrocuted RIGHT Anatomical imaging shows the damage to one of Strong s hands Photos courtesy of Melissa Strong With that thought everything went black and I was in a beautiful forest with so a large number of ferns sunlight coming through I turned my head and saw a tunnel in the forest There were these figures floating between me and the tunnel When I decisively was able to open my eyes I was face-down and was looking at the gravel on my driveway Then I could in the end scream for the first time Strong had been climbing for about two decades at that point starting with traditional climbing and sport climbing before finding her love for bouldering She routinely solved complex bouldering problems was a volunteer bouldering steward in Rocky Mountain National Park and ran a guide company with Adam for climbers at Hueco Tanks State Park Historic Site in El Paso Texas At the burn center in Greeley the morning after the accident doctors recounted Strong that she was going to lose six of her fingers and would only be left with her index fingers and pinkies That would ve been a catastrophic outcome for her climbing not to mention her ability to run a restaurant Undaunted she was transferred to UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora where she met Dr Ashley Ignatiuk A plastic surgeon who specializes in hand reconstruction Ignatiuk performed an critical preliminary test to determine whether he would be able to save Strong s thumbs He pricked the tips and a small amount of blood came out Strong called it the majority of major moment of my life If the tissue is perfectly burnt then there s nothing that we can do Ignatiuk explained But the tips of her thumbs still had a tiny bit of blood supply which means there were reconstructive options But not a lot of them because the whole palm side of her thumbs was utterly torched burnt all the way down to the bone With an electrical current the more resistive the tissue is the more it heats up The bone is the preponderance resistant so it heats up the majority of and you cook yourself from the inside out Which is what happened to her hands But her demeanor and the fact that she was such a fighter made me want to find a explanation With the small bit of hope Strong and Ignatiuk pressed forward Ignatiuk admits that at the time he thought there was a chance of saving Strong s thumbs and zero chance that she would ever climb again Right then after that tiny pool of blood came from my thumbs I swore that I would be the best individual in the world if anyone would just try to help me Strong announced And of syllabus I thought about climbing the whole time Climber Melissa Strong works on a boulder matter called Maneater on the Dating Jesus Boulder at Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park Colorado on June Photo by Helen H Richardson The Denver Post Eight surgeries skin grafts While Ignatiuk made a plan Strong started to get her life back About two weeks after the electrocution she started riding a stationary bike at the hospital She called on contractors got business done with the bank and consulted lawyers to make sure her restaurant s opening stayed on schedule Because of Strong s determination Bird Jim opened exactly six months after her accident on Oct She never faltered on that decision to open the restaurant mentioned John Witmer who co-founded the restaurant with her I remember her being very steadfast about continuing on no matter her injuries and through all the surgeries She has mental strength beyond almost anyone I know and a determination that she just won t quit Ignatiuk conducted eight surgeries plus an array of skin grafts to rebuild Strong s hands One of the procedures called the bilateral cross-arm flaps was a novel surgery in which Ignatiuk sewed both of Strong s thumbs into her opposite forearms She was stitched that way for three weeks The surgery enabled blood supply to the thumbs from her forearm tissue which was eventually incised and left on the thumbs to provide coverage for bones and tendons LEFT Melissa Strong lays in bed after her thumbs were surgically removed from her forearms CENTER The first handwritten note Strong wrote after being electrocuted stating One day I will climb again And will possibly cry a lot along the way RIGHT Strong rides a stationary bike in the hospital Photos courtesy of Melissa Strong Ignatiuk also took tissue from the back of her index fingers for her thumbs did multiple fusions to get her bones stable again and grafted thigh skin into her fingers and groin skin onto her palms In the end Strong was left with what she calculates as seven and three-quarters fingers a much better outcome than what doctors initially predicted She lost half of her right middle finger and parts of several others including a shortened left thumb Neither thumb has tendons and thus cannot bend While her thumbs were sewn to her forearms Strong used the pinkies she had free and her right index finger to continue her restaurant plans and run her guide company Her friends and fellow climbers were amazed but not necessarily surprised Bronson MacDonald explained she knew Strong would figure it out That was clear from very early on in her hospital stay Another climbing friend Jackie Hueftle saw the same resilience She s a really fierce personality Hueftle noted Melissa since she first started in the sport has gone out and tried stuff that was way too hard for her and just beat routes into submission It s a different mentality and we all saw that at the hospital too She s inevitably been determined and the accident didn t change that I felt like Dang you should ve died and somehow didn t and you suffered this life-changing accident for a climber Yet here you are just pushing along ' Return to the rock After a six-week hospital stay Strong s the greater part challenging days were ahead Her fingers were mostly saved but she had to relearn how to climb get her strength back and force her way past the mental and physical adversity that accompanied her recovery The first step forgiving herself I was standing next to a pit that could swallow me up Strong declared I was almost ready to jump into the pit and willfully let it swallow me Because I had no one to blame but myself for this accident I had to deal with that right now So I had to build a safety net over this pit to keep myself from living in despair and from living in anger at myself Climber Melissa Strong works on a boulder challenge at Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park Colorado on June Photo by Helen H Richardson The Denver Post The second step touching a climbing hold that Adam installed on the side of their staircase Then she progressed to grabbing a hold with her feet on the ground Then she took her feet off the ground and pulled herself up on a hold The final step was the hardest veritably climbing again That meant restoring confidence in her hands and upping her pain tolerance and endurance to reach from one hold to another In the couple of years after the accident it was a tedious slow and painful comeback painful emotionally and physically Strong declared The pain was almost unbearable when I first started to truly climb again Strong s reconstructed hands are no longer calloused The groin skin grafted to her palm is sensitive and can be easily cut open But she at last returned to the rock in the spring of nearly a year after her accident at the Box Car Boulder in Rocky Mountain National Park s Wild Basin The main thing was when she did that first climb it was super easy but it exhibited that she could still do it Adam Strong declared It was a V traverse which was one of her old warm-ups After that everything else was just building on that She doesn t climb quite as hard of routes as she used to but she s still trying her hardest The numbers are different but the effort is the same Climber Melissa Strong takes a water break while working on a boulder issue called Maneater on the Dating Jesus Boulder at Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park Colorado on June Photo by Helen H Richardson The Denver Post Related Articles out-of-state hikers struck by lightning on Colorado mountain Colorado s coolest new outdoor industry festival returns this weekend Man who scaled Garden of the Gods rock near Colorado Springs without gear rescued Fallen climber rescued in Eldorado Canyon State Park The prettiest places in the U S that you ll need a lottery permit to visit In the years since the -year-old has conquered problems as challenging as V which is roughly the mid-point of the bouldering ranking system V to V Outside of the sport Bird Jim emerged as an Estes Park mainstay with the business even expanding to a second adjacent building called the Bird s Nest which is a bakery coffee shop pizzeria that also functions as a catering and event space Yet even though her hands have healed Strong s recovery remains an ongoing process Without digits it s a constant everyday issue dropping things Ziploc bags buttons necklaces Strong explained Even climbing it can still be so frustrating because there s so multiple times I look at a trail and know if I had my old hands I could do it But it s a full-circle feeling because I get frustrated at all these things but then I can come around to the fact that I can still try at all these things in life and I m still alive It s a constant reminder that no matter what the daily frustrations are the gratefulness outshines them Climber Melissa Strong works on Fly Horse a V boulder dilemma at Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park Colorado on June Photo by Helen H Richardson The Denver Post Want more sports news Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver s teams