PE

In June 2017, I noticed a pain in my left calf. I had been walking several days a week, so I thought I may have pulled a muscle. I spent time trying to stretch it out over the next week, but it persistently got worse.    The pain I had been having in my calf then…

I’ve always been an active person, regularly hiking 40 miles a week. When I had extreme calf pain in 2011 at 54 years old, I went to ER and was diagnosed with an unprovoked deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and was prescribed warfarin for six months. They did not know what caused the DVT and did…

In 2016, while on duty as a firefighter, I experienced pain behind my knee and swelling in my right leg. A couple of weeks earlier, while playing with my children, I also experienced what I could only describe as a “shaken fizzy can opening feeling” in my chest that went after a minute or two.  …

I have always been physically active, but I had slowed down as our family grew. I was smack in the middle of getting back into steadily working out when, after a 10-mile morning bike ride, I started experiencing pain in my left leg.    The pain started on a Friday morning and intensified over the weekend,…

I had been feeling bad for more than six weeks, experiencing shortness of breath while doing light exercise, like walking up a flight or two of stairs. I had gone from being able to run 8+ minute miles comfortably to struggling to walk at a normal pace in a matter of weeks. My resting heart…

In December 2021, I was climbing up the subway stairs, heading to my college campus in New York City, when I started feeling off-balanced and dizzy.  I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks, so that’s what I thought was happening. I sat down and a nice family came over to me and asked if I…

I became committed to staying healthy in my late 40s. At 55, I was in the best shape of my life, hitting the gym three times a week.  One day after exercising, I felt a pain in my left calf, which I attributed to an overzealous workout. However, it continued through Christmas weekend. I planned…

My story begins when I first started experiencing swelling in my right ankle after getting home from work one day. Over the next few days I developed pain in my upper calf that started to hurt when walking. I immediately thought it could be a deep vein thrombosis (DVT), but instead of addressing this, I…

My son was stillborn on March 2, 2023. Almost immediately after, I started having chest pains, which I attributed to stress from my son dying. My doctor prescribed anxiety medicine and I was discharged that day.   However, for the next eight days, I experienced throbbing chest pain as if the world was sitting on my…

I injured my ankle in 2017 and needed surgery. Shortly after, I woke up in the middle of the night with intense pain in my back. I knew it was bad, as I was having difficulty moving. My husband took me to the ER, where I was fortunate that they did take me seriously. They…