Woman

In April of 2024, I flew from Tennessee to California for work. The night after arriving, I woke up in the middle of the night with a bad calf cramp. The following day, my calf was extremely sore– like the worst muscle cramp I’d ever had. That same day, I took another flight from California…

Watch a video of Joanna’s story here.  I am a miracle in motion, and my story is one of ongoing survival and transformation of finding beauty that fuels me in life’s most challenging moments. I didn’t know much about blood clots until three of them nearly took my life — an unexpected complication after a…

A week after I delivered my beautiful, Covid baby in August 2020, my identity as a lifelong runner changed forever. I was diagnosed with a DVT and admitted to a New Mexico hospital. I felt like my baby had been ripped from me. Covid visitation prevented my husband Dan or my baby from seeing me.…

I am a keen runner and I live in a national park in Wales, so I regularly run by myself in the hills. This is my happy place. Last year I ran for Wales for the first time, representing my country doing what I love, which was an incredible feeling. In early January of this…

At the end of summer in 2018, I was days away from the beginning of my college soccer career at Furman University. Every day that summer, I was preparing my body physically for the demands of being a college athlete. During my last workout before I left for preseason, I began experiencing chest pain, shortness…

It was the last day of our honeymoon. We were packing when I had a sudden onset of nausea, and I was also hot, dizzy, and out of breath. It felt like I was running a marathon every few feet I walked. But I was determined to enjoy our last day, so I took a…

I am a 24-year-old  old active and healthy woman. No real elevated risk factors for clots. I never thought it would be me. I had underwent an ablation, minimally invasive procedure to treat supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), which is an abnormally fast heart rate originating in the upper chambers of the heart (atria). They said that my SVT…

I am a three-time pulmonary embolism survivor! My first PE was in 2003 after childbirth complications (including a collapsed lung), which caused me to be hospitalized for one month. After I was released from the hospital, I returned one week later with shortness of breath while my lungs were still healing and stayed in the hospital…

I just had my one-year clotiversary! Last Presidents’ Day, on February 19, 2024, I faced a life-altering struggle. After days of coughing up blood and an urgent care provider’s dismissive reassurance that I simply had a bad case of bronchitis, I finally found help in the emergency room. Doctors diagnosed me with an unprovoked pulmonary…

In April 2020, at the peak of COVID, I started experiencing pain in my lower back. During a walk with friends, a sharp pain would shoot down my right leg with every step. I tried to ignore the pain and continued the walk. Later that evening, my leg started to swell, and the pain got…