When Michelle Waller, a multi-sport athlete, felt a cramp in her right leg, she thought it was no big deal. But soon after during a triathlon, she felt like her lungs “were going to collapse.” A specialist later told her she had dozens of clots in her lungs.
A blood clot in the lung, called a pulmonary embolism, is potentially deadly and much more common than most people realize. “It’s estimated that maybe 600,000 cases of pulmonary embolism occur in the U.S. each year,” says Dr. Todd Bull, Head of the Pulmonary Embolism Clinic at UCHealth’s University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora.