Hi my name is Jodie and I’m 34

I would like to share my story so that others could be aware of what symptoms to look for.

I had noticed for about 6 months (starting in 2020) that I was getting extremely out of breath just from doing simple things such as housework or walking. I put this down to me mostly being out of shape and lack of exercise. I woke up on the morning of 25th November 2020 with a sharp pain in my left shoulder. I shrugged this off as me having slept funny on it. Throughout the day the pain became excruciating, I couldn’t breathe properly and the pain had spread to my neck and down my left lung.

I called the hospital who told me to go in straight away. After seeing my blood pressure was through the roof and dangerously high they did some blood tests and x-rayed my chest. Nothing showed on the x-ray so I was sent for a CT-scan which showed I had quite a large blood clot on my left lung which had caused some tissue damage.

I stayed in hospital for five days while I had blood thinning injections and strong antibiotics as I had managed to also develop an infection in my lung. I was then discharged from hospital and I now take blood thinners twice a day as my blood clot is classed as unprovoked.

I can’t stress this enough –

if you ever have symptoms or feel like something isn’t right with your body please don’t put it off for so long like I did, get yourself checked out by professionals