Patient Stories

Anna Frutiger embodied brains, beauty, compassion, and athleticism, and seemed the picture of health while she was living her dream of becoming a dentist. No one expected that a blood clot would end her life, and it seemed beyond belief that Anna died on May 20, 2010 from a pulmonary embolism (PE) due to an…

Running is my greatest passion, but at age 27 it nearly cost me my life.  Last March, I ran a half-marathon and went straight into training for a full marathon.  I noticed a pain in my hip after I completed the half-marathon, but like most runners, I ran through the pain.  As it turned out,…

My story begins after I lost my dog, Lakota, from sudden internal bleeding, who was my pet and wonderful friend for 12 years.  I was so upset at my loss that I wept for many hours; the type of weeping that caused my chest to heave.  Later that night, I had severe cramping along the…

September of 2010 was busy in the King household.  The kids had just started a new school year, I was neck deep in volunteer work at school, and I was teaching cooking classes on fall cooking techniques.  We were so busy that I never stopped to think about the weird pains that started affecting my…

I am a 56+year old male.  I have occasional asthma, primarily exercised induced.  If I notice asthma symptoms while working out, I can usually push through them and finish the work-out, although I do use a bronchodilator when I need to. I am an avid martial arts devotee – black belt in one style, brown…

My experience with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) began more than 30 years ago in November 1979 when I was 30, and pregnant with my second child.  I flew with my husband and 3-year-old daughter from our home in Texas to visit my husband’s family in California for the Christmas holidays the next month.   While there,…

My experience with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) started in June 2010 when I was 37 years old.  My symptoms began a couple of days after I returned to Miami from a two week trip to Israel with my wife and best friends.  I felt a sharp pain in my left calf…

Caroline experienced debilitating blood clots two separate times in her life, but she’s not letting that stop her. Read about how she overcame her pain and lives her life to the fullest everyday, despite being on anticoagulants.

During the summer of 2008, I started feeling lightheaded when I walked up stairs or tried to lift something heavy.  This was a strange and new experience for me, since I go up and down stairs at work or at home about 30 times a day without effort.  I was then 41 years old and…

I consider myself a healthy 47 year old woman.  I exercise daily, eat healthy food choices, and am a non-smoker. In April 2011, I felt stabbing pains in my back on the right hand side under my rib cage, and the pain got worse every time I took a breath.  My husband drove me to…