PE

As told by her mother, Dawn. My daughter Leah was a healthy 20-year-old college student who needed a pretty extensive knee surgery in 2017. She came home from Purdue and had the surgery on May 12, 2017 so she could be ready to get back for fall semester. On June 5, 2017, she had a…

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,…

Throughout my pregnancy, I experienced pain and cramps in my legs, and lots of strange, unexplained bruising. My OB/GYN said it was normal. The last month of my pregnancy, I started having occasional chest pains and my breathing had become different. It didn’t feel like shortness of breath. The only way I could explain it…

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 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…

In September 2022, I gave birth to my second child, a little boy weighing 9 lbs. and 11 oz. Sadly, he passed away at 12 days old due to issues during my labor, which caused brain damage, specifically hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). At my six-week checkup with my general practitioner, I mentioned pain in my stomach…

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 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 the spring of 2023, I gained a new appreciation for the gift of breathing. Over a period of weeks, I grew increasingly short of breath. As I was misdiagnosed twice, first with allergy-induced asthma and then bronchitis, I struggled more and more to breathe during everyday activities. After several weeks, I was so short…

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,…