WINSLOW – All Vicki Nadeau remembers about the moment is a “big, bright, white light” and a “big huge noise.”

Then she was thrown about five feet backward, up against the side of a building. Confused but alert, Nadeau noticed her left hand was covered by something.

It was blood. Her left leg was bleeding, too.

The odds that a person will be struck by lightning in a given year, according to the National Weather Service, is one in 750,000.

It seems the odds were against Nadeau. The 20-year-old Winslow woman was jolted recently by a blast of lightning that left her bloodied and burned. Fortunately, nearly a month later, Nadeau’s wounds mostly have healed, and she’s able to talk about the experience.

“My doctor said I’m lucky to be alive,” Nadeau said. “A lot of people don’t live through lightning strikes.”

The strike occurred June 20, on a stormy Sunday afternoon. Nadeau, who is a waitress at the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Waterville, noticed that it was starting to rain outside; so she walked outside — car keys in hand — to roll up her car windows and see whether anyone else had theirs down.

Suddenly, before she reached the car, it happened. The electrical discharge touched down somewhere nearby and zapped her.

After she was thrown against the wall, Nadeau got up and went back into the restaurant, which had lost its electricity, and “everybody was staring at me.”

“I was all bloody and my manager said, ‘What happened?’ and I said, ‘I really have no idea,’” Nadeau said. Using a first-aid kit, “they wiped off the blood, and I noticed I had burns on my left hand and left knee.”

Nadeau said she wasn’t concerned enough about her wounds to go to the hospital right away. Instead, two days later she went to her doctor’s office, Three Rivers Family Practice in Waterville, and saw Dr. Rich Charlebois.

The doctor’s office officially listed both injuries as caused by lightning or its effects, according to a note written by Charlebois and provided by Nadeau.

She was concerned that the burn on her hand might be infected. Nadeau, according to the doctor’s note, has been “very jittery since” the incident and was “anxious” during her visit, though she seemed to be healthy otherwise. He recommended she use a healing cream on the burn, apply a new bandage and take a prescription medication used to treat infections.

Charlebois told Nadeau that the lightning probably “went through my hand and out my knee.”

Though her wounds have healed, Nadeau remains nervous about whether she’s more prone to another lightning strike now that she’s been hit once. Still, she’s gone about her life and continued working at the restaurant.

Her mother, Cathy Nadeau, has been a little scared about her daughter going outside if there’s a chance of lightning; but Vicki Nadeau said her 27-year-old brother, who’s a member of the Coast Guard, “thought it was cool.”

“I think she’s the luckiest person alive, to tell you the truth,” Cathy Nadeau said. “It’s just — wow — that’s how I feel.”

According to the weather service, most people struck by lightning survive the experience. Only about 10 percent are killed. The service also says lightning strikes are probably underreported. It estimates an average of 600 lightning-strike victims in the United States per year, including about 60 who die.