This woman woke up from a coma after suffering a traumatic brain injury. Five months later, she ran the Boston Marathon.
"I've come a long way, but there is a longer way to go. And I still have hope," says Rachel Foster.
A restaurant owner from Oklahoma defied the odds earlier this month when she completed the Boston Marathon — just five months after getting off of life support and awakening from a coma following a traumatic brain injury.
“The first word that went through my mind as I crossed the finish line was ‘redemption,’” Rachel Foster, 35, tells Yahoo Life of her April 17th achievement. “After the accident, many things felt like [they were] ripped away. I didn’t ask for any of that to happen. All the hard work I had been putting into healing and getting better, I was redeeming all of it through the marathon.”
It was a full-circle moment for the lifelong athlete, who in November had broken 17 bones and undergone two brain surgeries as a result of an electric scooter accident that put her in a coma for 10 days.
At one point in late November, her husband John tells Yahoo Life, doctors thought she wouldn't survive, and were prepared to remove her from life support. Then, two days before making that move, she woke up. "It was a miracle, all of it," he says.
“My first memory is waking up in a hospital bed,” Rachel recalls. “I remember seeing the lights above me shining on everything, and the room was very bright. I was in '10 out of 10' head pain. I had no idea about the accident. I didn't know why I was in the hospital.”
From there, it would be another three weeks before her core memories would come back, John explains. Once they started to trickle in, Rachel began remembering all the things she once loved — like running, and a strong desire to run the marathon.
“Boston was always the goal,” she says about what got her through early recovery. “I’m a pretty stubborn person, so I was all in.”
Though she ran the Boston Marathon in 2018 — as well as several others in Oklahoma over the years — John says they approached the idea with an abundance of caution.
“She's the toughest person I've ever met in my life, and I thought, if this is what she said her goal was, she's probably going to achieve it,” John, who’s been married to Rachel for 11 years, says. “All I want is to keep her safe."
Though the Boston Marathon was months away at that point, she was already racing it in her mind. But turning her dream into a reality became a different matter — one that would require months of grueling physical therapy.
“It was so frustrating,” she says of her recovery. “It was so foreign to me to not be able to tell my body to move the way that I wanted to move.” The rehabilitation was a slow but necessary process for getting to the point where she could run the race.
“My physical therapist asked me, ‘What are your goals?’" she says. "I said, ‘Get me to run again.’ That was my number one goal. I just wanted to run again."
‘There is always hope’
When doctors got wind of her marathon dreams, they weren’t entirely supportive.
“The general response was, ‘I’m sorry, you’re going to do what?!’” she recalls. Of course, that all changed when everyone saw how fast she was progressing, largely due to sheer determination. “Everybody saw how much joy running gave me, and there was soon a lot of encouragement from people cheering me on in the hospital. It all meant so much to me.”
When the day of the marathon arrived, Rachel says nerves were starting to set in. She had pulled a leg muscle two weeks before the race — and had only just left the hospital in late March. But she knew she was physically and mentally ready to run, and that she had support in her long-time running partner Tim Altendorf, who ran alongside her.
“I wasn't really afraid of anything else stopping me. I knew that Monday was coming and it was going to be, either run it or don't run it. And I did,” she says. “I remember putting my feet on the starting line with the guy I was running with. We said a prayer together and we waited for the gun to shoot. Then, it was off to the races.”
While running the 26.2 miles, Rachel says the magnitude of her accomplishment became fully realized. “I thought, I’m here, I’ve done it,” she remembers thinking. “I’ve gotten over so much in the past couple months — a pulled muscle is not going to stop me.”
She credits hope and faith for keeping her going. "I was literally back from the dead. I couldn't lose hope," she explains. "There was more to come in my future. I kept the hope. There is always hope."
Soon, she realized how much support she had in the throngs of attendees on the sidelines.
"While I was running, I would look to my right and my left and see all of these strangers running near me," she remembers. "It struck me that I have no idea what these people are going through in life right now, what kind of ups and downs they're going through, what kind of news they just got, whatever the case is. You have no idea what other people are struggling with or working through in life. And yet, they're cheering for you — and they don't even know your name! None of those people knew what I was struggling with and what I had just gone through."
"What I took away from that is to just simply love other people and encourage them regardless of what's going on," she continued. "I really hope that my life is an encouragement. I hope people can take my story and apply it to their life, and be encouraged by it. I truly hope so."
There's still a long road of healing ahead (donations are still being made to her medical-expenses via GoFundMe) — and the question of when, or if, she will return to her post as owner and head chef of Moni's Pasta and Pizza.
"It's something that we're going to have to talk about, and figure out. We haven't spent a whole lot of time on that yet — because the goal was April 17, Boston Marathon, 100%," John says. "And everything else can come later."
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