Patient Stories

I woke up one morning in 1978 to find that my right leg was swollen to twice its size. I called my doctor, who told me to come in immediately. He pressed his thumb into my ankle and created a ½-inch dent to show me how swollen I was and sent me to the hospital.…

I was nine weeks pregnant when I woke up on Dec. 24, 2022 with a pain in my back that radiated to my right side, under my ribs. The pain intensified in the evening and I had shortness of breath. At the ER, I was dismissed as having back pain and given pain medications. Six…

I started to feel pain under my left shoulder blade and thought I had pulled a muscle. I iced it and it started to feel better. But the next day, I woke up feeling worse. The pain had expanded around my rib cage on both sides, making it challenging to breathe. I went to work…

After walking up five flights of stairs to a friend’s Manhattan apartment, I rested at the top of the staircase. It took me almost 15 minutes to gain control of my breathing. I chalked it up to the extra pounds I had gained. A few days later, my bottom lower right extremity began to swell…

On May 22, 2022, I woke up and had breakfast with my family. As I was getting ready for my day, I felt dizzy and weak, then I fainted. When I woke up, I projectile vomited.   I eventually made it to the shower. When I got out, I was still feeling weak and dizzy. The…

In March 2019, I was recovering from a broken ankle when I began experiencing odd, unfamiliar symptoms, like shortness of breath and back pain. I thought it was anxiety.   My husband picked me up from work one day, and the second I got in his car, I couldn’t breathe, then I passed out. When he…

During my first pregnancy, I had been feeling faint. Soon after, I started getting headaches with flashing black dots in my eyes.  My midwife had told me that my blood pressure was higher than it should be, and that if I got any painful headaches and started seeing black dots, I should go straight to…

In the summer of 2021, I started to experience extreme back pain. At times, I was unable to sit down or move at all.   Being an active 20-year-old who grew up playing sports, I attributed my pain to a tweak that I just needed to stretch out. But the pain continued getting worse, and my…

I started having intermittent chest pain in March 2021. I thought it was a sports injury and went to see my primary care provider (PCP). By May of that year, the pain was constant, so my PCP scheduled a CT scan.   I arrived at the imaging center and they had not received my order.…

I have been an athlete my whole life. I am a Division 1 swimmer and work out every day. One day, I started feeling a sharp pain in my lower back after lifting weights and thought I overdid it or used incorrect form. It began to progress and I started getting extreme pain that radiated…