Patient Stories

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…

I completed treatment for Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer in June 2022. During my treatment, I developed tachycardia, a condition that caused my resting heart rate to be around 100 and could spike up 140.   In August 2022, my oncologist suggested we do a heart study. Two days later, I had a resting heart rate…

I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November 2017. I had a complete hysterectomy followed by the standard six rounds of chemotherapy, after which I had no evidence of disease until February 2021 when I had a recurrence.   I had to undergo six more rounds of chemo, and I also participated in a trial, but…

I was receiving chemotherapy treatment for early-stage breast cancer in 2009 when I started having persistent chest pain. After several weeks of increasing pain, I called the oncology nurse practitioner, and she instructed me to get to the nearest emergency room.  I underwent a chest CT scan, which identified multiple blood clots in one of…

It all started when I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. I had an adverse reaction to the chemotherapy treatment, which caused bleeding ulcers to develop from my throat down my esophagus to the site where the cancer had been removed.   This landed me in the hospital for over five days. Because I had lost so…