The past 20 days have been a gift for Jennifer Rogan. Her 11-year-old son may have been in a coma after a mid-July lighting strike, but day after day at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh there were glimpses of hope.

Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Jenny Rogan, center, says she is feeling much better that her son David is being released from Children's Hospital after spending the last three weeks in intensive care. David was struck by lightning on July 16 at a family reunion in Venango County. His recovery is expected to last at least a year. Dr. Ann Thompson, right, is chief of critical care at Children's and to the left is Rogan's father, Steve Clulow. Click photo for larger image.

A touch of the hand. A blink and a nod. Simple motions had begun to take on deeper meanings. And then he awoke.

David Rogan, her eldest son, had survived a bolt of lighting that could have reached 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit at a July 16 family reunion in Venango County.

Yesterday, even though he could not speak or walk, David made a giant leap toward recovery when he was released from Children's to undergo what will likely be a year-long rehabilitation at the Children's Institute in Squirrel Hill.

"My biggest fear through all of this," said Jennifer Rogan at a news conference, as she wiped away tears from her eyes, " was that David wasn't going to be David anymore."

The weeks Jennifer has spent in the hospital have been a blessing. It was only three Saturdays ago when a bolt of lightning surged though David's body as he tried to collect sap under the cover of a large pine tree.

Steve Clulow, David's grandfather, was on a porch at the Bell family farm, where the Rogans' reunion is held every year, as the flash was followed by a resounding boom.

He ran through a crowd of family members taking notice of everyone who was accounted for and realized the worst -- where was David?

Underneath the tree he noticed his niece, Tammy Coon.

Coon, a registered nurse from Franklin, Venango County, was performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on David.

The bolt had stopped David's heart and caused the neurological damage. In addition, he suffered through acute pneumonia while he was comatose.

"Just in the last week he has made very impressive progress," said Dr. Ann Thompson, the chief of critical care at the hospital. "It gives us a lot of optimism."

The resounding sounds of hope come on the eve of what will perhaps be the hardest part of recovery for David. There will be speech pathologists, respiratory experts and cardiologists among the rehabilitation specialists working to bring David back.

Just how close David can actually come to returning to "normal" is uncertain. Jennifer said he has been trying to talk and he is shaking his head yes and no.

It has been a mixture of faith, family and doctors that has allowed Jennifer to hold up so well for the past few weeks. People she never knew have become the best of friends.

But, one thing drives her hopes and dreams -- David.

"I believe there is a reason why this happened to David," said Jennifer. "Maybe out of everyone who was there David was the only one who was strong enough."