If you actually get hit by lightning it boils your blood and your heart explodes from the pressure change.
It sounds like what you experienced was ground current. These can precede a lightning strike and be quite painful, but are generally not in themselves fatal. Peter Croft gave a slideshow once where he was describing down-soloing a 5.10 ridge in the Karaoram (I think) as quickly as possible trying to get below the elevation where the ground currents were before a lightning strike occurred