YORK CO., S.C. -- "It felt like someone hit me across the back, and I fell in the dirt," Bob Edwards said after spending Tuesday night and most of Wednesday in the hospital recovering from a lightning strike.

He was outside picking tomatoes in his yard on Crystal View Lane when he heard thunder. Before he could get back inside, lightning struck.

"I saw a bright flash and heard the sound and I fell," Edwards said. "I don't remember much after that."

He blacked out for a few minutes then tried to crawl across his driveway to the house. He was dizzy, but remembers yelling at his two stepsons to stay inside.

Blake Dawkins, 14, called 911, and told them he thought his stepfather had been hit by lightning. Matthew, 12, said worried when he saw Edwards on his face in the dirt.

"It was scary. I was sad for what happened," he said.

Leslie McCraw lives next door to Edwards and was also outside as the storm approached. She and her husband saw the ambulance pass by, and he went over to see what had happened.

"Bobby wasn't doing too good," McCraw said. "He looked like he was hurt."

Emergency officials believe lightning struck a tree nearby and then went into the ground. The shock was enough to jolt Edwards and knock him off his feet.

Strangely, Edwards is all too familiar with the jolt of a lightning bolt. He was struck once before while mowing grass in Charlotte.

In 1997 he was working on Westinghouse Boulevard when lightning hit nearby .

"That time was much worse," he said. "The pain was terrible."

Edwards said he joined a support group for people who've suffered electrical shocks and similar injuries. He can't understand how this could happen twice, but he thinks about what friends have told him.

"A man told me once that I've been touched by the hand of God. I don't know," he said.

Emergency room doctors tested Edwards on Tuesday night for a heart attack as well as a stroke. He said the tests were negative. Edwards also is diabetic, but he said his sugar was fine Tuesday night.

He's suffering numbness in his hands and feet, fatigue and pain in his back, but feels like he'll be back to normal in a few days.

After two brushes with Mother Nature, Edwards said he'll stay indoors if a storm is anywhere nearby.

"There's a man in Colorado that's been struck by lightning seven times. I don't want to compete with him," he said.