Woman

At 32 years old, I had my meniscus repaired and a Fulkerson osteotomy (surgical procedure to restore knee stability) was performed to prolong the integrity of my knee. It was my fourth knee surgery and I expected everything to go according to plan. However, I found myself wondering, could this surgical procedure cause me to…

One spring morning in 2016, I woke up from a long, deep sleep in my California apartment. I turned on the morning Los Angeles news and saw that the musician Prince had died. I also simultaneously realized, in that moment, that I could not feel my toes in my right foot. I had been limping…

At 23 years old, I never thought I would be lying in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors who were baffled by one of the youngest cases of blood clots in the lung that they had ever seen. It was the summer of 2014, and my husband and I had just bought our first home…

March 2015 was the start of a health journey that would impact the rest of my life. Earlier that month, I was experiencing a slight, nagging pain in the back of my calf. After a few weeks of dealing with the symptoms, I made an appointment with my primary care doctor. Later that afternoon, I…

I am 19 years old right now, and in my second year of university. The school I attend is about 3.5 to 4 hours from home, so I live on my own with a few friends. In the beginning of November 2019, when I was still 18 years old, I started coughing a lot and…

When I was 19 years old, during the first week of my sophomore year of college, I awoke one morning with a strange, tight pain in my right shoulder. I assumed I had just slept on it funny, and continued about my day as usual. The pain didn’t seem to let up, even after I…

My two pregnancies were marked by dangerous blood clots – the first time when I was 23 weeks pregnant and the second time when I was 27 weeks pregnant. These were my first blood clots, which started in my leg as a deep vein thrombosis or DVT and moved from my ankle to my groin.…

I am a 23-year-old female from South Africa who was on the hormonal birth control pill for skin purposes. As a human physiology and genetics graduate, I knew the risks of taking contraceptives and how it increases blood viscosity, or thickness, but I never thought that it was going to happen to me, even though…

I have always been someone who believed I could overpower being sick— at 31 years old, a hot shower, big glass of water, an over-the-counter pain medication, and a fresh face of makeup could still solve just about any ailment I experienced. But, when I broke my ankle in late November 2018 and started experiencing…

After I broke a bone in my foot, I was put in a leg cast up to my knee. I was told to keep it elevated, don’t put any weight on it, and rest. Ten days later, I felt lightheaded and my cast was feeling tighter, so I went to the doctor. They put on…