Patient Stories

In the summer of 2022, I started having shortness of breath but thought nothing of it. I had just run an 18-mile trail race the Saturday before, and it can take a few days for your body to feel normal again. A little coughing and sore throat from running in the dirt for four hours…

In January 2021, I woke up in the middle of a Sunday night feeling like I needed to put ice water on my body. As I carried the glass of ice water back to bed, I suddenly found myself struggling to make it to the couch. What seemed like minutes later, I woke up with…

In August 2020, I had severe left calf cramping, but I didn’t think much of it. The next morning, I awoke to a sensation going up my leg. I felt an explosion in my chest and could not catch my breath. I figured it was anxiety until the next day, when I couldn’t handle the…

I will never forget February 18, 2022. At the time, I was a healthy, active 30-year-old, training for my seventh half marathon. Two nights before, I had developed chest pain and shortness of breath. I wrote off the chest pain as a pulled muscle from lifting and dismissed the shortness of breath as anxiety.    But…

I had an injury to my forearm in June 2022. Less than a week later, I started getting severe chest pains. I was taken to the hospital with c-reactive protein test (CRP) markers of 93 and was sent home with antibiotics.   A week later, I experienced the same pain, but worse. This time a CT…

Turning 50 was no big deal to me. I was healthy, happy, and active. But a few months later, I was diagnosed with five life-threatening blood clots in my lungs, along with a large infarct — a small area of dead tissue resulting from the failure of blood supply – at the base of my…

I started to get sick very frequently around March 2019. I was having terrible colds and coughing all of the time. A few months later, I started having difficulty climbing stairs and couldn’t even walk without developing shortness of breath and feeling like I was having a heart attack.    I went to my primary care doctor…

One week before my diagnosis, I noticed I was getting weak. Not weakness from being tired, but unusually weak without cause (I thought).   I also had a nagging cough and was constantly clearing my throat. I began to presume that I had caught the coronavirus, so I started doctoring myself. After a few days, I…

I had abdominal surgery in July 2020 and had a difficult recovery. I could barely move. On Sunday, October 18, 2020, I woke and showered. I was home alone — my wife was visiting her brother. While climbing the stairs back to our bedroom, I became extremely short of breath.   Despite that, I made my…

When I was 14, I flew to my dad’s house in California to celebrate Christmas with him and my siblings. By the middle of the week, my left thigh was swollen, red, and hot and I couldn’t walk on it. I tried many things to get myself moving, but it hurt too much.   When I…