Man

I had a bad crash on my road bike in late February of 2023. My initial injuries were a broken clavicle, shattered elbow, fractured pelvis, three broken ribs, and subsequent collapsed lung. I had elbow surgery that night and waited a month for clavicle surgery. What wasn’t caught, however, was a brain bleed. I was…

I had just gotten over a cold where I was laid up in bed for a few days, so I went for a run to get back on the exercise train. Shortly into my run, I felt an odd pain in my chest and decided to cut it short. The pain worsened over the next…

In December 2012, I was at work when a mild discomfort in my rib cage quickly become excruciating.   Upon arriving at the ER, I was given various tests, including an EKG and ultrasound, which revealed blood clots in both of my legs, or deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Further testing confirmed that I had blood clots…

In June 2017, I noticed a pain in my left calf. I had been walking several days a week, so I thought I may have pulled a muscle. I spent time trying to stretch it out over the next week, but it persistently got worse.    The pain I had been having in my calf then…

I’ve always been an active person, regularly hiking 40 miles a week. When I had extreme calf pain in 2011 at 54 years old, I went to ER and was diagnosed with an unprovoked deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and was prescribed warfarin for six months. They did not know what caused the DVT and did…

It was the day after Thanksgiving last year and I was doing yardwork. I had been having breathing issues and was feeling lightheaded and tired over the past day or so. But I dismissed it as being due to the holidays and a busy work schedule.    Around 3 p.m., as I walked up a set…

In 2016, while on duty as a firefighter, I experienced pain behind my knee and swelling in my right leg. A couple of weeks earlier, while playing with my children, I also experienced what I could only describe as a “shaken fizzy can opening feeling” in my chest that went after a minute or two.  …

I have always been physically active, but I had slowed down as our family grew. I was smack in the middle of getting back into steadily working out when, after a 10-mile morning bike ride, I started experiencing pain in my left leg.    The pain started on a Friday morning and intensified over the weekend,…

Last July, I was told I have factor V Leiden. I was unfamiliar with this, but my doctor said I didn’t need to do or take anything for it, so went about my life.   Less than a year later, I was having a lot of pain in my left leg and thought maybe I had…

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…