DVT

On December 11, 2024, I went to the emergency room because my entire right arm was swollen. My father told me not to go since I wasn’t in pain and already had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for the next day, but something told me to get it checked out. I truly believed nothing serious was…

In May of this year, I took a short flight, only about two and a half hours one way, and soon after, I noticed a cramping sensation in my right calf. I assumed it was just soreness or dehydration, so I ignored it for a couple of days. When the pain didn’t go away, I…

I’m 30 years old and have a complicated medical history. As a teenager, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and today I manage more than 20 different health conditions. On April 20, 2021, I felt severe pain in my left leg. It was swollen, purple, and hot to the touch. I called my…

I’m a 63-year-old man and have experienced two instances of blood clots (deep vein thrombosis, or DVTs) in my left calf. The first happened in 2018, shortly after being diagnosed with stage one lung cancer. I had surgery to remove the lower part of my left lung and followed regular scans for five years before…

Two weeks after a 68-mile bike ride, I couldn’t straighten my leg, and my veins bulged. “It’s just a bruise,” the ER doctor said, looking at my leg. He dismissed it the same way that the sports doctor and physical therapists did. But weeks later, my leg looked blue with spider veins. I sent a…

In 2014, while in podiatry school, I went to the student health center because I was short of breath and was coughing up blood. The nurse practitioner diagnosed me with bronchitis. Less than two weeks later, I learned the truth — I had a saddle pulmonary embolism, which means a large blood clot was blocking…

On Christmas Day, 2017, I was on a flight home to Sydney. I sat in the window seat on the connecting flight from Dubai for 15 hours. A young couple sat beside me, lounging in their seats and sleeping with their legs stretched out. Luckily, I didn’t need the toilet. About 30 minutes before the…

Five days before everything came to light, I sat in a rheumatologist’s office explaining my concerns. Instead of investigating, she dismissed me, chalking it all up to my Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. My after-visit summary simply said to “wear spandex-type garments,” and there was no more that rheumatology could do for me. I left feeling unheard and…

My story starts on a fun family trip to New York City. The first day after our flight, I woke up with the most painful muscle cramp in my left calf. I stretched and walked it off throughout the day, and the pain subsided for a few hours. I went three more days of stretching…

I was living in Arizona and going to school. I was in a very minor car accident where my knee hit the dashboard. It was bruised, and about two weeks later, I started feeling a painful cramp behind my knee, similar to a charley horse. When I told my primary care doctor, he ordered an…