Birth control

In 2017, at 21 years old, I was undergoing my third surgery on my left knee after I had torn my ACL and meniscus playing college basketball. I was back on the court a few short weeks later, but felt that my hamstring was unusually tight. This didn’t seem right to me, so I decided…

I had my first blood clot when I was 24 years old after ACL reconstruction surgery — a risk factor for blood clots that I was unaware of. After my surgery, I noticed that my arm was warm, swollen, and red, all signs of blood clots. I knew something was off, and decided to go…

I am 18 years old and during November 2020 I contracted COVID-19. A few months later, I started having pain in my leg and I found it difficult to breathe. My mom took me to the doctor and they told me it was just anxiety. But three days later, I convinced my mom that something…

The morning of November 14, 2019 I fell in my bathroom and hit my head on the bathtub. I was unconscious, lying in a pool of blood, until I finally gained some life and crawled to call 9-1-1. When the medics arrived, I was barely able to breathe and went into cardiac arrest three times.…

In May of 2021, I dislocated my ankle. I was also on hormonal birth control. After the ankle injury, I was told to go home and rest, and not to bear weight on my ankle for 4-6 weeks. After about a week and a half, I had intense pain and cramping in the calf of…

After twisting my ankle a few weeks prior, I had a dull charley horse ache in my calf. Nothing worked to relieve it, but it wasn’t too bad, and it was easy to ignore most of the time. I started to notice when climbing up my stairs at home I would get a little out…

In September 2020, at the age of 24 and in good health, one week away from graduating with my master’s degree, I nearly lost my life. I woke up one day with a headache slightly worse than normal. Over a week, things got worse until I was in more pain than I had ever experienced…

I was diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary emboli, or blood clots in my lungs, on July 20, 2020, at the age of 28. This clotting was provoked by estrogen-based birth control combined with immobility due to a recent wisdom teeth extraction. This was a day I will never forget and a day that changed my life…

My mum saved my life. I was diagnosed with upper extremity deep vein thrombosis (DVT), or a blood clot in my arm, in late June 2019. I started showing signs and symptoms at the beginning of the month. I was 26 years old, had a 9 to 5 job, and loved going to the gym.…

December 19, 2019, will always be a day I remember. Three weeks prior to that day, I noticed calf pain in my left leg that would come and go. I chalked it up to a running injury. I was in the best shape of my life, running 20 miles a week and attending fitness classes…