In my early 40’s, divorced Mother. My ex-husband and I started rekindling our relationship and ended up getting remarried. As a result I went back on a “low dose” birth control. I’d never had any issues in the past with BC, so thought nothing of going back on BC. At the same time I started training for a race called “Reach the Beach”, so I was running several miles a day, many of the runs included hills as part of the training. In early May, shortly after going on BC, my right calf started to become sore. As I am a very active individual, I thought it was just due to the increased “hill” training I was doing. I also had taken two long distance plane flights, again not ever connecting the dots, as I’d never experienced any issues in the past. Fast forward to August, and an increasingly tight and sore calf. I went to my family physician, he also attributed it to training, but thought it may be prudent to conduct a “quick” ultrasound. Luckily he strongly encouraged me to get it done immediately, as I was leaving for vacation to a lake in a remote part of Maine. The ultrasound revealed a very large blood clot going from my ankle up to the bottom of my knee. I was in the hospital on Heparin for 6 days. As a backstory, my mother died from a blood clot, in the early 60’s. We did not know then and I did not know at the time that we both carry the Factor V clotting disorder. You can imagine how extremely scared I was laying in the Emergency Department hearing the news of a blood clot, and wondering if history was going to repeat itself, as I lost my mother when I was only 3 years old and my son was very young at the time. Life is good now, but I am so passionate about getting the word out regarding BC and interaction of hormones.