Patient Stories

In 2016, while on duty as a firefighter, I experienced pain behind my knee and swelling in my right leg. A couple of weeks earlier, while playing with my children, I also experienced what I could only describe as a “shaken fizzy can opening feeling” in my chest that went after a minute or two.  …

I have always been physically active, but I had slowed down as our family grew. I was smack in the middle of getting back into steadily working out when, after a 10-mile morning bike ride, I started experiencing pain in my left leg.    The pain started on a Friday morning and intensified over the weekend,…

Last July, I was told I have factor V Leiden. I was unfamiliar with this, but my doctor said I didn’t need to do or take anything for it, so went about my life.   Less than a year later, I was having a lot of pain in my left leg and thought maybe I had…

I had been feeling bad for more than six weeks, experiencing shortness of breath while doing light exercise, like walking up a flight or two of stairs. I had gone from being able to run 8+ minute miles comfortably to struggling to walk at a normal pace in a matter of weeks. My resting heart…

In December 2021, I was climbing up the subway stairs, heading to my college campus in New York City, when I started feeling off-balanced and dizzy.  I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks, so that’s what I thought was happening. I sat down and a nice family came over to me and asked if I…

I became committed to staying healthy in my late 40s. At 55, I was in the best shape of my life, hitting the gym three times a week.  One day after exercising, I felt a pain in my left calf, which I attributed to an overzealous workout. However, it continued through Christmas weekend. I planned…

My story begins when I first started experiencing swelling in my right ankle after getting home from work one day. Over the next few days I developed pain in my upper calf that started to hurt when walking. I immediately thought it could be a deep vein thrombosis (DVT), but instead of addressing this, I…

My son was stillborn on March 2, 2023. Almost immediately after, I started having chest pains, which I attributed to stress from my son dying. My doctor prescribed anxiety medicine and I was discharged that day.   However, for the next eight days, I experienced throbbing chest pain as if the world was sitting on my…

I injured my ankle in 2017 and needed surgery. Shortly after, I woke up in the middle of the night with intense pain in my back. I knew it was bad, as I was having difficulty moving. My husband took me to the ER, where I was fortunate that they did take me seriously. They…

I completed treatment for Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer in June 2022. During my treatment, I developed tachycardia, a condition that caused my resting heart rate to be around 100 and could spike up 140.   In August 2022, my oncologist suggested we do a heart study. Two days later, I had a resting heart rate…