Birth control

Waking up and not being able to catch your breath at 20 years old is the scariest thing. On November 14, 2022, I woke up at 4 a.m. gasping for air with intense pain in my lower back and sharp pain in my chest. My immediate reaction to the pain was to try and stand…

During my senior year at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, I started getting sick. For about two months, my heart rate would randomly start going really high for no reason. I would wake up in the middle of the night and it would be at 160 beats per minute. I went to the doctor, and they…

In November 2022, I was experiencing symptoms like joint pain and swelling in my arms and legs. I avoided seeing my doctor at first, but then I noticed I was increasingly short of breath, easily winded when I took the stairs and even when having a conversation. I had a little bit of chest pain,…

I had a bad case of the flu last December. However, I am a primary school teacher and a workaholic, so I did very little about it and carried on going to work. On the last Friday before Christmas, I woke up at 4 a.m. gasping for breath. My chest was extremely tight, and I…

On October 7, 2020, a vein burst in my leg. At the ER, they ran no tests. They told me the vein looked like cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection, and sent me home with an antibiotic. They said if the red area got bigger, I should come back. I went back on the 11th and…

In February 2018, three days after emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder, I had a really bad pain in my right calf and was having difficulty breathing. So, I went to the emergency room, and I was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (DVT), or a blood clot in the right leg, and bilateral pulmonary embolism…

On Halloween 2021, I noticed that my thigh was sore and I was out of breath. I figured it was just a pulled muscle and allergies or a cold coming on. Walking into work the next morning, I was so out of breath that I fainted. I had fainted in the past, so I just…

In February 2023, I went to the ER with abdominal pain I couldn’t explain. After four days in step-down ICU, 30+ labs, two CT scans, three ultrasounds, a chest X-ray, and an echocardiogram, doctors told me I had blood clots, which compromised my blood flow and caused splenic infarcts. After a consult with my hematologist,…

My husband and I are both ultra runners. On June 27 of this year, we were both going for an early morning training run with him starting about five minutes behind me. I had been experiencing shortness of breath for a few weeks before this run. Little things, such as bringing groceries in from the…

In April 2020, I had been feeling sick and brushed it off as allergies. Due to COVID, I had a telehealth visit and was diagnosed with bronchitis. After four months of a lingering cough, I started to have a hard time breathing while doing the most menial things. Standing became so trying. I finally went…