{"id":74449,"date":"2024-03-20T09:01:23","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T15:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/?p=74449"},"modified":"2026-01-27T16:00:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:00:41","slug":"scary-ordeal-with-a-pulmonary-embolism-at-young-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/scary-ordeal-with-a-pulmonary-embolism-at-young-age\/","title":{"rendered":"High school runner is back on the track after exhausting, frightening ordeal with blood clots"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A top student and runner at Arvada West High School, Rhiannon Danborn had to face a pulmonary embolism at a young age. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Picture a teenage girl who sleeps a lot, even during the during the day, as the whirl of high school activities carry on without her.<\/p>\n

Her homework sits waiting for her on a nearby desk or laptop. As the volume of unfinished schoolwork rises, her grades drop. She no longer pursues the activities she once savored.<\/p>\n

Some might dismiss lethargy like this as an adolescent phase. Others might suspect depression as the root cause. Few would guess that the actual culprits were blood clots \u2014 sticky masses of cells \u2014 that had lodged in the girl\u2019s pulmonary artery, starving her lungs of oxygen. She didn\u2019t sleep to avoid the world; she slept to conserve her body\u2019s dwindling energy supply.<\/p>\n

Rhiannon Danborn was an athletic, high-achieving 16-year-old when she suffered an artery-blocking clot, called a pulmonary embolism<\/a> (PE). She ran varsity cross-country and track at Arvada West High School and was looking forward to improving and competing in both her junior year. But no pulse-pounding race of any length could match the challenges and the mysteries that the PE presented.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought I\u2019d be in a position where something like my breath would be in jeopardy,\u201d Rhiannon said.<\/p>\n

\"Rhiannon
Rhiannon Danborn leads the pack again after she had to give up running for a time during high school while she coped with a rare pulmonary embolism. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pulmonary embolism at a young age: a relative rarity<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Simply developing a PE put Rhiannon in a small club no one wants to belong to. The clots happen to some 900,000 people every year in the United States, but most occur in people ages 60 years or older.<\/p>\n

\u201cPulmonary embolisms are unusual events in people at a young age,\u201d said Dr. Todd Bull<\/a>, a pulmonologist and director of the UCHealth Pulmonary Vascular Disease Clinic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rhiannon\u2019s case was unusual in another respect that prolonged her unexpected struggle with PE, said Bull, who has cared for her since November 2022.<\/p>\n