The week before I turned 29, I started having a weird pain in my leg. It wasn’t terrible, but it was noticeable enough that I mentioned it to my doctor during a scheduled appointment. She told me it sounded like sciatica and to come back if it got worse. The pain stuck around for about ten days and then faded, so I moved on.

A couple of weeks later, on March 21, 2017, I was in a training session when I suddenly started feeling short of breath. It got worse as the morning went on. By lunchtime, I could barely breathe. I told my coworker, and she was so worried that she insisted on going with me to urgent care.

We waited for about an hour and a half. By then, my breathing had started to improve, but I still had chest pain. When the doctor finally saw me, he asked a few basic questions:

Do you smoke? No

How often do you drink?2-3 Times a week

How often do you exercise? 5 times a week

Then, just like that, he brushed it off. He downplayed everything, told me I had probably pulled a muscle while working out, and even suggested I was overreacting. He then told me to get a massage. That night, I got the most painful massage of my life. But by then, my breathing was back to normal, and my chest pain had faded.

The symptoms I ignored

The next time I felt that same chest pain was the night before my fiancé, Devin, proposed. I remember texting my friends in the middle of the night, complaining that I had pulled a muscle again. No one responded—probably because they all knew what was happening the next day. By the time Devin proposed, the pain had mostly gone away, and I didn’t think about it again.

Fast forward to February 2018—I started feeling pain in my left calf. I figured I had overworked it at the gym, so I brushed it off. I even complained about it to my friends, but it didn’t seem serious. A week before my 30th birthday, I had cupping therapy done on my leg by a family friend who had been doing it for 30+ years, and the pain disappeared.

I turned 30 on March 9, feeling good. But on March 12, the leg pain came back. My friends later told me that I had also mentioned chest pain again that day, and they urged me to go to the ER. But by then, I had gone through this so many times that I figured it wasn’t a big deal.

Why would I have thought it was serious?

By this point, I had seen multiple doctors for these symptoms. They all told me the same thing:

• I was young.

• I was active.

• I was healthy.

• It wasn’t serious.

And every other time the pain had eventually gone away. So why would this time be any different?

Well, now I know why.

Learning to forgive myself

For a long time, I blamed myself for not knowing better. I kept replaying everything in my head:

• Why didn’t I push harder?

• Why didn’t I ask for more tests?

• Why didn’t I take my symptoms more seriously?

And honestly? Other people blamed me, too. I get it. But the truth is, I didn’t know.

Why would I have thought something was seriously wrong when every single doctor reassured me that it wasn’t? I was doing everything “right.” I exercised. I ate well. I listened to the experts. What more was I supposed to do?

Looking back, I see the warning signs—the leg pain, the chest pain, the shortness of breath. These were classic symptoms of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), which eventually led to my strokes.

But I didn’t know that then. And I can’t change the past.

What I can do is forgive myself.

• I forgive myself for trusting doctors who dismissed my symptoms. I did what I thought was right—I sought medical advice and listened to professionals.

• I forgive myself for not pushing harder. Hindsight is 20/20, but at the time, I had no reason to believe my pain was anything life-threatening.

• I forgive myself for thinking that being young and healthy meant I was invincible. Because it turns out strokes, blood clots, and serious medical conditions can happen to anyone.

• I forgive myself for not knowing what I didn’t know. Because how could I?

Moving Forward with Awareness

Now, I know better. And that knowledge comes with responsibility—not just for me, but for others. If you ever experience persistent leg pain, chest pain, or shortness of breath, please don’t ignore it.

• If a doctor brushes off your concerns, advocate for yourself.

• Get a second opinion if something doesn’t feel right.

• Ask for tests.

• Trust your gut—because no one knows your body better than you.

But most importantly, if you’ve ever been in a situation where you didn’t know better at the time, forgive yourself. You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it.

I choose to move forward not with guilt, but with awareness, advocacy, and self-compassion. Because blaming myself won’t heal me—but learning and growing will.