Woman, 35, Runs Boston Marathon 5 months After Coma, Life-Threatening Injury

This past November, Rachel Foster, 35, and her partner John, 36, were out on a day night when they made the decision to get a journey on electrical scooters in their Edmond, Oklahoma community. Instantly, for explanations that are even now a mystery, Rachel Foster shed consciousness and fell off her scooter. She ended up with a lifetime-threatening brain injury and 17 damaged bones.

After a lot more than a week in a coma, various surgeries and months of rehabilitation later, Rachel Foster, owner and head chef at Moni’s Pasta and Pizza restaurant, accomplished the Boston Marathon on Monday in what the pair calls a “miraculous” recovery.

“Ahead of she could stand up on her individual and wander on her have, she was telling me from her healthcare facility bed, ‘I however want to run Boston,'” John Foster tells Right now.com.

Rachel Foster, who’s run about 10 marathons beforehand, had competent and paid to operate Boston right before the incident. And she wasn’t likely to enable her intention slip absent. “I am a runner at coronary heart and it brings me a lot of joy. It brings me a good deal of stress relief,” she claims. “But I knew I was not in the form of functioning — I could scarcely move my body.” 

Following surviving her lifestyle-threatening accidents, Rachel Foster embarked on a monthslong healing journey to make great on that guarantee to herself.

Crisis medical procedures and a “miraculous” recovery

Straight away following the crash, “I ran up to her and saw that she was unresponsive,” claims John Foster, whose earlier education as a lifeguard aided him comprehend the warning symptoms of unconsciousness promptly. “Her eyes were being open and staring at practically nothing, and she was struggling to breathe,” he remembers.

He named 911 and his spouse was taken to OU Well being, where medical practitioners decided that she’d experienced a traumatic brain injury.

All through that uncertain time, John Foster drew energy from the religion he and his wife shared. Although she was in the healthcare facility, 3 of their relatives customers all independently sent him the exact same Bible verse — Luke 8:50 — in which Jesus reassures a loved ones grieving what would seem to be the dying of their daughter. He tells them to “anxiety not: Believe that only, and she will be designed full.”

For John Foster, it was not just a coincidence. It turned a “bedrock basis of my religion,” he says, as he and the group of medical professionals navigated his wife’s precarious health care situation.

Neurosurgeons determined that the bleeding and strain in Rachel Foster’s mind was way too serious and, finally, she underwent emergency operation to take away element of her skull to ease the force, John Foster recollects. The team learned a blood clot in her brain as very well.

She stayed in the clinic in a coma unable to breathe on her own for a lot more than a 7 days and demonstrating no indications of advancement. “She was actively incurring much more damage to her brain cells every single 2nd, every moment,” John Foster says, at which point he felt one more minute of religion.

“I was praying for her with her mothers and fathers and my mom, and I felt a religious link with God in which he reported to me, ‘It is completed.’ And I felt that very strongly out of nowhere,” he remembers.

Following a third profound religious second, he felt “incredibly confident that God was heading to possibly (mend Rachel) or he wasn’t, and I was going to believe in him both way.” He provides, “I can’t explain to you how darkish and awful it was to assume about that, but I also just cannot categorical to you the peace that I experienced in trusting God with it.”

The circumstance turned so dire that he started off the approach of donating his wife’s organs.

But on Nov. 19, 2022, just a day just before she was established to be taken off the ventilator, Rachel Foster began to wake up.

“Her eyes popped open,” John Foster remembers, introducing that medical practitioners experienced instructed him formerly that could be a superior signal or that it may well not mean a lot. But, from there, items moved immediately.

The medical professional rushed into the home and started testing her concentrations of working. He reported, “Rachel, if you can listen to my voice, squeeze my hand,” John Foster recalled, “and she squeezed his hand.” The health care provider recurring directions with the other hand, and once more she squeezed his hand.

Then, he asked her to wiggle her toes, “and she started wiggling the two of her ft,” John Foster suggests.

But she even now wasn’t respiration on her very own yet.

The health practitioner then turned to the ventilator and said, “Rachel, I am turning the ventilator off and you have to breathe on your individual,” John Foster claims, “which she hadn’t performed in 10 days, and he turned the ventilator off.”

Eventually, immediately after an agonizing several seconds, she took a breath. With encouragement from the medical professional, she took a further.

“In virtually the blink of an eye — or the opening of an eye — she went from totally unresponsive on every amount to ‘I’m in this article, I am listening and I am responding,'” he remembers. “And so every thing transformed.”

Having from a hospital bed to the Boston Marathon

Once she was awake, Rachel Foster nonetheless had a very long way to go on her recovery journey.

She had no memory of finding on the scooter or the incident, and the suffering drugs created it challenging for her to sort new reminiscences through the early section of her recovery, John Foster describes.

“My 1st actual memory is waking up in a clinic mattress, and it kind of felt like I was waking up underwater,” she suggests. “I was just this utterly puzzled.”

In January, Rachel Foster underwent surgery to change the piece of her skull that was taken off with an implant. That assisted address her serious head agony and permitted her to concentration far more on producing progress in rehabilitation. She then commenced doing work with therapists at the Shepherd Centre in Atlanta, Georgia, a clinic specializing in rehabilitation for individuals with circumstances such as brain accidents, strokes and spinal twine injuries.

From the really beginning, her quantity 1 target was to be able to operate yet again. But the process was “painfully gradual,” she says. She necessary to rebuild muscular tissues and stability so that she could, step by step, relearn to sit up in bed unassisted, stand up and, lastly, walk.

“Her entire intention was to operate the Boston,” John Foster explains. “So each day after accomplishing four or 5 hours of outpatient remedy, we would have lunch and then she would question me to go on a stroll so she could observe strolling.” 

The bodily remedy took psychological power as properly, Rachel Foster says, incorporating that her purely natural stubbornness assisted her arrive again just about every working day prepared to boost — even as a result of the small times along the way.

“What I am physically carrying out is having one particular little phase, but mentally I truly feel like a cheetah and I am just running as speedy as I can,” she claims. “That is what I was undertaking in my head because that is what I was hoping to get my physique to do, but it just wasn’t there still.”

She felt like she seriously turned a corner when her therapist allow her get on a treadmill. Slowly, she attained the harmony to wander and, sooner or later, jog on the treadmill with no keeping on to the railings.

From there, she started operating on sound floor without the need of support “from orange cone to orange cone,” she remembers, in advance of operating her way up to functioning all-around a track. “John figured out how several moments all over you’d have to go about the track for 1 mile,” she suggests, “so then I was off to the races. I was managing in circles and I type of felt like a hamster.”

Right before heading out to Boston, Rachel Foster was able to operate 10 miles on the keep track of. She also took the added step to get medically cleared to run the marathon, which essential her to run the race with a companion by her facet. The evident choice was her local running buddy of nearly 10 decades.

Likely into the race, Rachel Foster knew she had to mentally prepare and established acceptable expectations for herself. “This was the toughest marathon I have at any time run just mentally and physically,” she says. “I had to convey to myself, ‘It’s Ok if you need to wander.’ But I’m pretty happy to say that I did not wander I ran the total factor with (my running buddy) by my aspect.”

And this 7 days, on April 17, all the operate paid off as she crossed the complete line.

What went via her head all through all those miles? “I am back again from the dead, dammit,” she claims with a chuckle. “That is not one thing to be shy about. That is a massive deal. … That’s a heavy assumed. I’m right here working. I am performing something that a whole lot of men and women would say is nuts.” 

Rachel Foster is even now on her recovery journey and executing outpatient therapy at a regional rehabilitation centre and doing work in the direction of acquiring cleared to generate yet again. Whilst she would not know when she’ll be jogging one more marathon, she’s definitely preparing to preserve managing.

And, hunting again at all they have been by, the couple hopes that their story evokes folks not to drop hope. “We are making an attempt each and every working day to do items the proper way, to appreciate God, to test and maintain a favourable attitude and be grateful that, by way of this, folks are currently being encouraged,” John Foster says.