Birth control

The day before New Year’s Eve of 2017, I was experiencing a fast heart rate and shortness of breath. My Apple Watch was going crazy saying my resting heart rate was 180 and above. I ignored it, thinking it was broken. I went to bed and woke up the next morning with shortness of breath,…

No one will ever forget when the world shut down because of COVID in 2020. A few days later, I started to lose feeling in my left leg. Whenever I stood up, my leg turned purple. While everyone else was taking walks to pass the time during lockdown, I was finding it harder and harder…

In September 2023, I was feeling poorly with what turned out to be a kidney infection. I couldn’t move as the pain was unbearable and was bed-bound for a few weeks. By the end of September, I was unable to walk. It all happened so quickly. My calf swelled up at least three times the…

In March 2020, I couldn’t move my right leg after waking up, and soon my entire leg and thigh became rock-hard and swollen. I was rushed to the hospital and was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis in my right leg, running from my right foot to my right pelvis. The doctors said that if had…

At 45, I was a healthy, active mom and just thought I was having ongoing respiratory issues from a previous cold and cough. I suddenly had pain in my chest, shortness of breath, and a rapid heart rate, which got worse if I walked around. I went to a walk-in clinic the next day, where…

I woke up one morning with the worst headache of my life. I immediately thought it was a migraine because my mom suffers from them. I had also been sick for weeks before, so I thought it could have been from that. So I popped a couple of ibuprofen and went to work. It never…

I am a two time blood clot survivor. My first pulmonary embolism was at 21 after endometriosis surgery and while on birth control, and my symptoms included shortness of breath and back pain making it impossible to sit back or lie back. My second clot happened when I was 25 after a cross-country flight. I…

In November 2022, I caught COVID-19 and was battling sickness for over a week. Mild symptoms persisted for a few weeks beyond that, but I was pretty much back to my normal routine by December. In January 2023, I began noticing symptoms that I had never experienced in the months prior: random shortness of breath,…

In late February 2023, I was at work and experienced an extreme cramp in my right calf muscle. I just thought it was due to me being on my feet the entire day and I tried to walk it off. My calf was swollen, warm, and it was uncomfortable to walk. It felt as though…

Waking up and not being able to catch your breath at 20 years old is the scariest thing. On November 14, 2022, I woke up at 4 a.m. gasping for air with intense pain in my lower back and sharp pain in my chest. My immediate reaction to the pain was to try and stand…