Factor V Leiden

In October 2020 at age 28, I woke up at 5 a.m. with back pain. It felt like I pulled a muscle. Throughout the day, the pain got worse. It hurt to sit or lie down. By the next morning, I was vomiting from pain and decided to drive myself to the emergency room. The…

In March 2016, I had only been on estrogen-based birth control for a few months and decided to take a four-hour road trip with some friends. A few days after, I started to feel like I had heartburn. At first, my symptoms felt a lot like indigestion — pressure in the chest, but not painful.…

I had two episodes where I was walking through my house and felt something in my chest. I felt clammy like I was about to pass out. After the second episode in March 2020, I went to the doctor I told her I thought I had blood clots. I felt something dragging through my chest…

In March 1989, I was a sophomore in college and on spring break in Florida when my left calf became extremely swollen and I could barely walk. I also had severe pain in between my shoulders and had shortness of breath. A friend took me to the ER, where I stayed for almost two weeks.…

As told by his wife, Allison In January 2017, my husband Brian and I had been married for one year, and I had just given birth to our son seven weeks earlier. Brian started mentioning that he had bad calf pain. For a man that never complained, this was odd, but I didn’t know to…

On Valentine’s Day 2013, I woke up with what I thought was a stomach virus. A few hours later, I was in the ER with a diverticulitis attack that split open my intestine and spent 10 days in the hospital. A few months later, I had another diverticulitis attack, but I caught it early and…

I was at the Walmart self-checkout. I had been feeling sore and had a hard time catching my breath all day, and I collapsed in the self-checkout. I came to, and people were standing over me. I say I’m all right, but my pain is getting progressively worse. I ended up driving myself to the…

As told by his sister, Kenzie We made a family trip from Texas to Colorado at the end of July 2022, which is an 8-9 hour drive. Landon had asthma that was triggered by cedar. Since the trip, he had some allergy symptoms but associated that with the cedar. On August 5, 2022, my brother…

As told by her daughter, Kelly My mother was 54 when she passed away from a pulmonary embolism. She had fallen and broken her ankle while walking across our street to look for a Mother’s Day card for my grandmother. The break was a bad one, so the orthopedic surgeon suggested surgery. We all were…

In 2011, I suffered the first of seven blood clots. This was the start of my new life and a wake-up call heard loud and clear. Little did I know during in the early days about the connection that would surface dating back to the day I lost my only parent, my mother, to a…