{"id":13272,"date":"2018-12-06T21:17:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T21:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madd.org\/?p=13272"},"modified":"2022-06-13T10:37:51","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T10:37:51","slug":"voices-of-victims-krystal-foster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madd.org\/voices-of-victims-krystal-foster\/","title":{"rendered":"Voices of Victims: Krystal Foster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirteen Minutes Changed So Much<\/strong><\/p>\n

The crash put her in a coma for a month. When she woke up, her entire life was different.<\/p>\n

Krystal\u00a0Foster got off work at the normal time: 10:30 PM. She was happy she didn\u2019t have to stay late like she sometimes did because tonight, her husband Chris had brought their daughter Raven and they would all get to drive home together. She was exhausted. Krystal was pregnant with her second child and in this season, work was definitely taking a toll. But her face lit up as she walked toward the car and she saw the two most important people in her life.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Krystal, Raven on the left, her daughter Ari on the right with Krystal\u2019s mother<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thirteen is sometimes considered an unlucky number. For Krystal, it will forever be her least favorite number, not because of superstition, but because 13 minutes after she got into the car, her entire life was flipped upside down.<\/p>\n

A 19-year-old under the influence of drugs and alcohol was driving the wrong way on the highway. The last thing Krystal remembers was the impact. Then everything went black.<\/p>\n

Her then five-year-old daughter, Raven was conscious the entire time. She was sitting directly behind Krystal and saw things she will never forget. She saw her father bleeding from the chest. She saw the windshield fall on her mother and tear into her face. She screamed to both of her parents trying to wake them up. But no one heard her.<\/p>\n

Although Krystal cannot remember any of these moments, they will forever live engraved in Raven\u2019s mind. She told Krystal later, \u201cYou were taken away in a green ambulance, and daddy and I were taken away in a red one.\u201d But for a while, Raven remembered nothing else but the crash. Raven suffered a brain hemorrhage and forgot almost all the people, places, and memories before the crash. She also forgot things like how to eat on her own or tie her shoes. But Krystal was not able to be there for her in the months after the crash.<\/p>\n

Krystal was completely unconscious after the impact of the crash. In fact, she was completely unconscious for the next month. She woke up from her coma with a month missing and a life forever changed.<\/p>\n

Krystal\u2019s mother tried to tell her through the coma that Krystal\u2019s husband, Chris had died on the way to the hospital. She tried to tell her there was a funeral for him. She tried to tell her that her unborn baby had not survived the crash. She tried to tell her that Raven was safe. Krystal heard none of it.<\/p>\n

Krystal woke up a month after the crash in a rehab facility. She didn\u2019t know how long she had been out. She didn\u2019t know what her world was like. All she knew was that she was in pain. When they told her that her husband was killed because of the crash, it took her a while to comprehend. She called his phone multiple times from rehab. All she got was his voicemail. All she would ever get was his voicemail.<\/p>\n

It was in this season that Krystal\u2019s MADD advocate came to the rescue. She gave Krystal a MADD care package that included reading material about survivor\u2019s guilt and helped her cope with dealing with lifelong injuries. Krystal says that her MADD advocate was the only person who understood what she was going through.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople kept telling me I was lucky to have survived,\u201d Krystal said. \u201cAnd all I could think was \u201cDon\u2019t call me lucky. I\u2019m not lucky.\u2019 That crash took my husband, it took my unborn baby, it gave my daughter brain damage, and gave me injuries for my life. But the MADD advocate and a lot of the people I met through MADD are the only people who truly seemed to understand my pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

To this day, Krystal still battles with the ramifications of her injuries. She had to have 15 facial reconstruction surgeries, open heart surgery, and pelvic reconstruction surgery. She can hardly walk now and will need hip replacement surgery soon. But she remains strong. If you were to talk to her today, she would tell you her resolve has never been stronger to fight drunk driving with her entire being.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember when they were wheeling me into a follow-up appointment after my open heart surgery, two surgeons were talking about me,\u201d Krystal recalls. \u201cOne said, \u2018This can be wrong way crash victim. She didn\u2019t survive.\u2019 My response to them was \u2018Yes I did.\u2019 They didn\u2019t expect me to live, let alone walk. But here I am. And I\u2019m walking with purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krystal survived. But today she is doing so much more than surviving. Krystal is defeating the injuries of her crash. And she is now a voice of hope for victims of drunk driving everywhere, just as her MADD advocate was that voice of hope for her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirteen Minutes Changed So Much The crash put her in a coma for a month. When she woke up, her entire life was different. Krystal\u00a0Foster got off work at the… Continue reading Voices of Victims: Krystal Foster<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[176,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cat-drunk-driving","category-victim-stories","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVoices of Victims: Krystal Foster - MADD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/madd.org\/voices-of-victims-krystal-foster\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Voices of Victims: Krystal Foster - MADD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thirteen Minutes Changed So Much The crash put her in a coma for a month. 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