Mental health

In 2009, I experienced the most challenging and life-changing event. After giving birth to my beautiful baby girl by C-section, I was overjoyed, but soon faced a series of unexpected and frightening health complications. Two days after giving birth, I began experiencing severe abdominal pain and could barely move. This pain went on for weeks,…

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.…

I was 13 weeks pregnant when I experienced an awful headache while at work. I went home and spent the evening in a dark room. When I awoke, my head still ached, but it was manageable. Over the next week, I began having headaches and nausea throughout the day, so I contacted my midwife. She…

I was working in the chemistry lab when suddenly I experienced a sharp, stabbing pain in my lower back that caused me to fall to the ground. I was rushed to the nearest hospital and, after some tests, I was sent home with the diagnosis of muscle spasms. From that day onwards, the pain in…

I had knee surgery and was six weeks post-op, so I had no worries about clots. I was also on birth control, though. I stretched one night and felt excruciating pain in my left rib. I could barely move. I managed to get to a hospital and was told it was costochondritis — inflammation of…

In 2004, following two invasive surgeries in four weeks, I had a severe event. I had an immediate pain in my calf and suspected a blood clot. I told the surgeon and he said I didn’t have the symptoms of a blood clot, and aside from my calf pain he was right. There was no…

In May of 2019, I began experiencing a dry cough. It continued to progress to the point where I could no longer hold a conversation without coughing every four words or so. I went to a family doctor who brushed it off as adult-onset asthma and allergies, gave me a chest X-ray, and sent me…

In October 2023, I had just returned from a Florida vacation. The following day, I woke up with a subtle ache in my left calf. When I shared with my husband, he casually said, “Do you have a blood clot?” But after years of international flights with no issues, it was easy to attribute the…

I woke up one morning in the summer of 2011 with nausea and pain in the left side of my torso/abdomen. At first, I wrote it off as a stomach bug and called in sick at work. After a couple of days, I was feeling worse so went to an urgent care clinic. The doctor…

In Paris, during my second night, searing pain tore through my right lung. I hurried to the hospital and straight into the ICU. Reality hit hard. Blood clots besieged my lungs, diagnosed as a pulmonary embolism (PE), stemming from a larger clot in my left calf—deep vein thrombosis (DVT). The cause? Not a mere muscle…