Patient Stories

After a business trip to France followed by a week of mild COVID symptoms, I was eager to get back into my routine. That is, until I started feeling a strange pain in my leg about three weeks later.   I’d recently had a dermatological procedure on that leg, so I thought my stitches might be…

June 2021 was the month my life was flipped upside down. I started experiencing intense pressure in my head and a sharp pain in my neck and shoulder that radiated down my arm.    I visited my primary care doctor and an urgent care center, where I was prescribed muscle relaxers, a steroid, and was set…

In March 2022, while going about my everyday activities, I suddenly experienced extreme breathlessness. It felt like someone had hit me, and my heart was beating out of my chest.    I’m a single parent, and my then –7-year-old found me on the bed. There was no ambulance available to get to me; I was told…

In December of 2022, I had surgery on my femur. Five days later, I felt an excruciating pain in my calf and knew something was wrong. I went to the ER and was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) that occluded almost my whole leg. I was prescribed  blood thinners and I’ve been taking them…

My blood clot story started at a time that should’ve been the happiest of our lives — we had just become a family of four! A few days after giving birth to our second child, I developed a severe headache.   Unfortunately, at the ER, I was misdiagnosed and treated for post-partum pre-eclampsia. After a few…

I was diagnosed with COVID in February of 2020 and had severe symptoms, including extremely painful breathing.   I developed an internal jugular vein thrombosis (IJVT)  in my neck during the initial COVID-19 infection. I had symptoms from the IJVT for two years, but it wasn’t discovered until I had a transient ischemic attack (TIA), which…

In November of 2021, I had COVID and was down and out for two weeks. As I was starting to feel better, pain began developing in my left leg. At first, I thought I was dehydrated or lacking protein.    Two days went by. My left leg was twice the size of my right leg, and…

My cousin, who was 22, died of a pulmonary embolism when I was 10 years old. At autopsy, she was found to have protein C resistance, explained by the factor V Leiden mutation. As this mutation is genetic, the whole family was tested. I was found to be a carrier of this mutation, and I…

Update (July 29, 2024): I was excited to make my professional triathlon debut in Maine this past weekend, competing as the only athlete in the field with Factor V and needing to take blood thinners twice a day. It was a non-wetsuit swim, and I was really happy with my bike split on one of…

I have always been a relatively active person, and I participated in kickboxing and powerlifting.   It was 2020 and I was one month away from my 30th birthday, doing jump squats in my living room due gyms closed by COVID. I felt a pain in my left hip and thought I pulled a muscle.   …