Mental health

I was walking my dog when I suddenly felt weaker with every step. I needed to sit down on the ground repeatedly throughout the walk. I had chest pains, shortness of breath, and I felt faint. I called my family and went to the emergency room. It turned out that my D-dimer levels were high.…

In October 2017, I had a long day working behind my desk and had not gotten up or hydrated much. After about 10 hours, I headed straight to a volleyball game as I played in a league. Midway through the game, I experienced a sharp, painful cramp in my right calf that would not subside.…

I experienced my pulmonary embolism in September 2023. Our youngest son and I had taken our older children to school, and the day went on normally. I noticed that I was becoming easily winded while doing really simple activities. My heart rate was also high. After school, our middle child had soccer practice and sat…

I was 33 years old. I had a cramp in my leg and figured it was just that until it lasted three days. I’ve always been judged and misunderstood when it comes to my health anxiety but this time it saved my life. I knew something wasn’t right and made a doctor’s appointment. I had…

On July 31, 2021, after being misdiagnosed and sent home almost a week prior, I finally received a diagnosis that would forever change my life: sub-massive pulmonary emboli and pulmonary infarction. I call it “the back pain that saved my life.” My primary symptom was upper back tightness and discomfort, which I later learned was…

One week I was a healthy 24-year-old hiking mountains, the next I was bedridden in a hospital with an unprovoked 20cm DVT. I had an unusual cramping pain in my leg on a Friday night. I took some painkillers and decided to sleep it off. The next morning I felt okay and set off for…

It was June of 2023. I was five days postpartum when I started to get really erratic blood pressure readings. It would go from 177/206 to 123/79 within minutes, up and down like a roller coaster. I was also having palpitations and I remember telling the doctor later that I had a twinge of pain…

In September 2022, I underwent a foam sclerotherapy on the great saphenous vein in my left leg to treat a varicose vein. This is a minimally-invasive, non-surgical procedure that involves injecting a foam mixture into varicose veins to treat underlying vein conditions. At the time, I was unknowingly Covid positive for the second time in…

I was at work just sitting down when my heart started racing. My Apple Watch alerted me that my heart was beating at 140 bpm, something I had never felt before. I chalked it up to just being overworked and tired. So I sat down drank some water and took a break. My heart started…

I’m 43. My first DVT experience was at 19 years old while in college. Long story short, I was sent home by two different doctors over two months even though my leg was in excruciating pain and eventually could barely walk. The third doctor knew what was wrong with me within minutes and sent me…