Woman

June 2021 was the month my life was flipped upside down. I started experiencing intense pressure in my head and a sharp pain in my neck and shoulder that radiated down my arm.    I visited my primary care doctor and an urgent care center, where I was prescribed muscle relaxers, a steroid, and was set…

In March 2022, while going about my everyday activities, I suddenly experienced extreme breathlessness. It felt like someone had hit me, and my heart was beating out of my chest.    I’m a single parent, and my then –7-year-old found me on the bed. There was no ambulance available to get to me; I was told…

In December of 2022, I had surgery on my femur. Five days later, I felt an excruciating pain in my calf and knew something was wrong. I went to the ER and was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) that occluded almost my whole leg. I was prescribed  blood thinners and I’ve been taking them…

My blood clot story started at a time that should’ve been the happiest of our lives — we had just become a family of four! A few days after giving birth to our second child, I developed a severe headache.   Unfortunately, at the ER, I was misdiagnosed and treated for post-partum pre-eclampsia. After a few…

I was diagnosed with COVID in February of 2020 and had severe symptoms, including extremely painful breathing.   I developed an internal jugular vein thrombosis (IJVT)  in my neck during the initial COVID-19 infection. I had symptoms from the IJVT for two years, but it wasn’t discovered until I had a transient ischemic attack (TIA), which…

My cousin, who was 22, died of a pulmonary embolism when I was 10 years old. At autopsy, she was found to have protein C resistance, explained by the factor V Leiden mutation. As this mutation is genetic, the whole family was tested. I was found to be a carrier of this mutation, and I…

I have always been a relatively active person, and I participated in kickboxing and powerlifting.   It was 2020 and I was one month away from my 30th birthday, doing jump squats in my living room due gyms closed by COVID. I felt a pain in my left hip and thought I pulled a muscle.   …

When I was eight months pregnant, my grandmother passed away. My blood pressure began to spike, and I was diagnosed with gestational hypertension.     I ended up being induced at 37 weeks in order to keep the baby safe. The night I delivered my daughter, my dad went into cardiac arrest. He passed away a week…

My first issue with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) began in November of 2022. My family and I went on a five-hour road trip to Disneyland. A week after returning home, I began to develop a charley horse cramp in my right calf.    I assumed I had pulled a muscle somehow. I tried massage and…

In January 2021, I woke up in the middle of a Sunday night feeling like I needed to put ice water on my body. As I carried the glass of ice water back to bed, I suddenly found myself struggling to make it to the couch. What seemed like minutes later, I woke up with…