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Lisa Lacy: Living With Hereditary Antithrombin Deficiency and the Constant Threat of Clotting

Lisa Lacy/LinkedIn

Sep 11, 2026, 07:59

Lisa Lacy: Living With Hereditary Antithrombin Deficiency and the Constant Threat of Clotting

Lisa Lacy, Relationship Advisor, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“There is a particular kind of terror in knowing your own blood can kill you.

I live with hereditary antithrombin III deficiency, a rare clotting disorder that means my body is dangerously good at doing the one thing blood is supposed to know when to stop doing:

Clotting.

I have survived 10 pulmonary embolic events, including massive clots in both lungs.

Earlier this year, I went to the hospital and heard another sentence no one ever wants to hear:

‘You have a cluster of embolisms in your right lung.’

During that same hospitalization, I was diagnosed with lupus pancreatitis.

The pain was worse than childbirth.

And childbirth nearly killed me too.

When I had my child, I was given a 7 percent chance that both of us would survive.

Yet here we are.

Still beating odds that were never particularly interested in being beaten.

Now add menopause.

Menopause can pile additional strain onto a body already living with serious clot risk. And the treatment that gives many women their lives back, systemic estrogen, is generally considered unsafe for someone with my history of pulmonary embolism and inherited thrombophilia.

So I get to live inside the contradiction.

The disease makes menopause harder.

The disease can also take one of its most effective treatments off the table.

I live with systemic neuropathy and electrical shocks through my body. Every unfamiliar twinge becomes a question.

Clot?

Heart?

Stroke?

Something else?

I take anticoagulants because I have to.

I have also clotted while taking them.

The medication I depend on to help keep me alive also means bleeding is its own danger. A head injury is not “just a bump” when you live anticoagulated.

There is severity on every side of this.

And yes, I have heard the old ‘Viking blood’ story, that certain inherited clotting traits may trace through Northern European populations because faster clotting could once have helped people survive injury or childbirth.

I love the mythology of it.

But I won’t pretend science has proven that story for antithrombin deficiency.

What I do know is this:

My blood has tried to kill me more times than I can count without getting angry.

And still I rise.

I have work left to do.

A book to finish.

Conversations to have.

People to reach.

A life I am still very much living.

But I am not going to wrap mortality in inspirational language and pretend I never think about it.

It is a bitch to wake up with things you desperately want to build while knowing you could drop dead before you get to build them.