Taking a Breath: A Stop the Clot Podcast is a show committed to shining a light on the dangers of blood clots and breathing life into The National Blood Clot Alliance’s mission of pushing these preventable killers to the forefront of public discourse. We will hear the stories of notable blood clot survivors like Olympic medalists Katie Hoff Anderson & Tatyana McFadden, among others, as well as the expertise of medical professionals to provide connection, empathy and resources to listeners like you. At Stop the Clot we know the patient because we are the patient. Journey through this miraculous series with hosts and blood clot survivors Leslie Lake and Todd Robertson as they, with the help of listeners like you, change the way we think about blood clots. Join us as we collectively stop the clot.
The National Blood Clot Alliance (NBCA) is a 501(c)(3), non-profit, voluntary health organization dedicated to advancing the prevention, early diagnosis and successful treatment of life-threatening blood clots such as deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.
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It is practically impossible to overstate how quickly it happens. A clotting event. A moment that changes everything forever. Bryce was on the stadium field with his team. He had done some stretching and he was jogging up and down the sideline to warm up. When he said he couldn't breathe and then suddenly he collapsed. A beautiful life cut short in the blink of an eye.
We immediately met with the doctors who explained to us that Bryce had a cardiac arrest of significant magnitude. There was no function in either side of his heart.
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Every six minutes, somebody in America dies of a blood clot. We're here to change that statistic. Welcome to Taking a Breath, a Stop the Clot podcast. A podcast dedicated to bringing awareness of the dangers of blood clots from the clotting disorders community to the world. With the help of many notable blood clot survivors, we are here to give you the knowledge and the skills that you need to prevent this silent killer.
My name is Leslie Lake. I am the president of the National Blood Clot Alliance and I am a blood clot survivor. And my name is Todd Robertson. I am the patient engagement liaison for the National Blood Clot Alliance and I am a seven time blood clot survivor. And we're here to stop the clot.
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For some, a clotting event is more than just a close call. For some, it is the day where life as they know it changes forever. Our guest today is someone whose perseverance through immeasurable loss has brought them to the forefront of vocal advocacy for blood clot awareness. Advocacy that will undoubtedly prevent other families from experiencing the harrowing tragedy of losing a child. Here to discuss the life and legacy of her late son,
Bryce Taggart Stanfield, please join me in welcoming the beacon of change that is Terry Stanfield.
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I'm Terry Stanfield. I'm Bryce Stanfield's mom. Bryce was a 21-year-old football player from Georgia who passed away in February of 2024 from a massive pulmonary embolism. Bryce had confidence and charisma like the Rock, but he was humble and kind like Clark Kent. And he was as handsome as both of them combined. When Bryce wore his glasses, he looked just like Clark Kent.
And that's why everyone referred to him as Superman. Bryce's smile was his superpower. And the thing that I miss the most, I really miss Bryce's smile. Bryce is our only child. And to Fred and to me, Bryce is our whole world. And he'll always be our whole world. Bryce is forever 21 years old because a blood clot took him from us way too soon.
Bryce played football since he was six years old. He was 6'2", 265 pounds of pure muscle. He played defensive line and tight end in high school, where he wore number 85 for the Harrison Hoyas in Kennesaw, Georgia. His teammates and his fans called him mean green because the Hoyas were green and blue. The Hoyas went 15-0 in 2019 to win a state championship, and Bryce was a two-time All-Region pick.
He was elected team captain and he had supernatural strength. He was so, so strong. Bryce set records in his high school weight room that still stand today.
Bryce was elite on the field and in the classroom. In high school, he was awarded the GPA Scholar Athlete Award for his 4.38 GPA. His high school coach described Bryce as uncommon and elite. He was highly recruited out of high school. He earned 26 Division I football scholarship offers. And then he confidently committed to be a Paladin at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. At Furman, he saw
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a unique opportunity where he could be both a champion and be a dentist. Bryce was a pass rusher, a really good pass rusher. In his freshman year, he was named to the Southern Conference All-Freshman Team, and he was also named a Freshman All-American. Bryce was a key contributor on a Paladin defense that topped the Southern Conference in virtually every statistical category.
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In 2023, Furman won the Southern Conference Championship and made a run to the quarterfinal round of the National Championship. We didn't realize it in that moment, but Bryce played his final game at Montana on December 8th of 2023. Bryce had dreamed of playing football in the snow, so I'm really happy he got to play that game in the snow. Off the field, Bryce was a mentor for elementary school kids that he read with.
and middle school kids in Furman's Men of Distinction program. He enjoyed visiting pediatric patients at Greenville's Children's Hospital. He was a loyal friend and a teammate who could always be counted on. Bryce would regularly hold study sessions for his classmates, sometimes for classes he wasn't even taking. I would give anything right now to hear him explain the renal system to me just one more time.
He has a long list of academic accolades, including academic honor roll, all academic team, the commissioner's medal, and NCAA Division I academic ball district team. Bryce's past rush coach and his mentor, Chuck Smith, from the Atlanta Falcons, inspired Bryce to live like it's third and eighth. In football, third down is a crucial moment in the game because the defense has to stop the offense from getting a first down.
the pressure is extremely high. When applied to life, the phrase encourages living with a sense of urgency and focus, as if you're facing a critical moment where the stakes are high and you have to give your best effort. Bryce approached every part of his life with this third Nate mindset.
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In January of this year, Bryce was preparing for his senior season of football. He was having regular weightlifting and conditioning workouts with his team.
One day after a lift, he started having some pain in his back that was radiating towards his hips and down his legs. The athletic trainers evaluated him and treated him for a muscle strain. Muscle strains happen to athletes all the time. Despite various therapies, Bryce's pain wasn't getting any better. And he also started complaining of shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, and feeling like he was going to pass out.
On Friday, February 2nd, the trainer sent Bryce to the orthopedic specialist. She diagnosed a muscle strain and prescribed a muscle relaxer and some anti-inflammatory medication. There was an explanation for all the symptoms that he was having. His back and legs were hurting because he squats 585 pounds and he benches 405 pounds. He was short of breath because he has a little bit of asthma and it's very cold outside.
His heart rate was accelerated because he had used his albuterol inhaler. And he was fatigued because he was a student athlete and he hadn't been sleeping very well because his back was hurting so bad.
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On Wednesday, February 7th, about 6 a.m., Bryce was on the stadium field with his team. He had done some stretching and he was jogging up and down the sideline to warm up when he said he couldn't breathe. And then suddenly he collapsed. The trainers responded immediately and they called EMS right away because to them it appeared Bryce was having a seizure. Bryce passed out, but he woke up shortly before the ambulance had arrived.
They said that he was combative, but he was communicating. When the ambulance got there, Bryce sat up and with some assistance, he walked to the ambulance. He laid down on the stretcher and the EMT later told me that that's when Bryce looked at him and he said, it's my heart. I'm going to die.
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As the ambulance prepared to leave, Bryce suddenly became unresponsive and he went into cardiac arrest. They did CPR and gave him three rounds of epinephrine, but there was never any response.
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About 6.30 that morning, we got a phone call from one of Bryce's teammates and one of his best friends at Furman. PJ told us frantically that Bryce had had a seizure during practice and they were taking him to the hospital by ambulance. The doctors at the hospital later told us that the critical care team had already been paged while the ambulance was en route and they were waiting for Bryce to arrive at the hospital. He was taken immediately into surgery and placed on ECMO. And ECMO is full heart and lung bypass.
By the time we arrived at the hospital, Bryce's coaches, his trainers, hospital administration were waiting outside the building to usher us in. So we knew that this was very, very serious. This was on Wednesday, February 7th.
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We immediately met with the doctors who explained to us that Bryce had a cardiac arrest of significant magnitude. There was no function in either side of his heart. He had been deprived of oxygen for an extended period of time and his brain scans did not look good. The next morning, the doctors explained a little bit more to us about Bryce's condition. They told us that Bryce had a massive blood clot. They called it a saddle embolism. They said that a DVT had formed near his hip or his back.
and it had traveled through the inferior vena cava where it blocked both chambers of his heart simultaneously. And this caused the cardiac arrest. They told us that Bryce was deteriorating and that he would not recover.
Hundreds of teammates, coaches, professors, classmates, and friends came to the hospital to pray with us and to be with Bryce. I'll never forget one of his teammates sitting beside Bryce, holding his hand, and he looked at me and he said, Bryce is Superman. Superman doesn't die.
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On the morning of February 9th, Furman's president, Dr. Elizabeth Davis, came to the hospital and she held a private ceremony in Bryce's hospital room. She arrived dressed in full regalia and she dressed Bryce in a cap and gown. Our family, teammates, coaches, and his friends filled the room as she conferred his Bachelor of Science degree in Health Sciences. Magna cum laude.
Bryce was also awarded Furman's highest honor, the President's Award.
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And then he passed away at 2 47 on February 9th. Within just a few hours, Bryce went from being an elite, healthy, young athlete to every single organ in his body had failed.
Bryce died from a massive pulmonary embolism. We've since learned that Bryce had a genetic clotting disorder called factor five Leiden. Bryce inherited that gene from me and I inherited it from my dad. None of us were aware until it was too late for Bryce. I've had that thought through my head so many times that if the orthopedic specialist who saw Bryce on that Friday had just for one minute thought,
possibly he could have a blood clot. She could have been a hero. Or if we had known that Bryce had factor five Leiden and had a risk of blood clotting, maybe with that information, something might have sparked the question and she might've said, let's check this out a little bit more. I've heard doctors say that only
5 to 10 percent of the population have factor V Leiden. And I question that statistic because what percent of the population has ever even heard of factor V Leiden or been tested for factor V Leiden? And of the population that has been tested for factor V Leiden, how many have identified the gene mutation? Because I don't think that it's as rare as 5 to 10 percent.
The NCAA has multiple tests that they subject athletes to prior to competition. One is a sickle cell anemia test. Every athlete that participates with the NCAA is required to submit the results of a sickle cell anemia test. What if every athlete was required to submit the results of a blood clotting test, a genetic blood clotting risk assessment test?
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I can tell you a story about one of Bryce's close high school friends. Obviously, they're aware of what happened with Bryce. Her mom called me a few weeks ago and told me that her younger sister is a high school lacrosse athlete. She attends the high school where Bryce went. And the day after a lacrosse practice, the athletic trainer at the school had noticed that she was limping around. And he asked her, what's going on with your leg?
And she said, I'm just a little sore from practice yesterday. So he took a look at it. And of course, what happened to Bryce was top of mind. After looking at it, he said, I've seen this before and it doesn't feel right. Why don't we just check this out? Just to be safe rather than sorry. And he called her mom and said, I think you should take her to the Children's Hospital of Atlanta and just have them look at this. So she did. It was a DVT.
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Sometimes among the hundreds of potential diagnoses, symptoms get misread. And in the event of asymptomatic ailments or illnesses that mimic symptoms, how do we best ensure the most accurate representation of somebody's apparent symptoms? Here to discuss misdiagnoses and how to navigate complex and covert symptoms, this is Dr. Jacob Kogan. What I usually tell people is that when blood clots happen,
They're not subtle. So one of your legs will all of a sudden be painful and swollen and won't get better. It will get worse for blood clots in the lungs or pulmonary emboli. Usually you very quickly, all of a sudden have trouble breathing and that doesn't go away either. That will get worse too. This isn't exactly what happens in every instance, but those are kind of the rough guidelines and
In somebody young and healthy and athletic, like in this case, I suppose I can imagine there might be a tendency to attribute it to something more common like a muscle strain because again, why would you think that somebody young and healthy like that would have something like this happen to them? Factor V Leiden is a genetic condition that can increase someone's risk of blood clots. So, factor V is one of several.
proteins in the blood that causes blood clots to form naturally. If you have a mutation in your DNA that makes factor V, so in this case, factor V lydin is what it's called, you can have increased activity of factor V and that can in some cases increase someone's risk of forming an abnormal blood clot.
We get DNA from both of our parents. Most people don't have this. Some people, about 5 % of the Caucasian population have one mutation in factor V, Lydin. So they have one normal one and one abnormal one. And some people get one from both parents and those are the patients who are at really high risk of blood clotting. That's pretty uncommon.
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Most of the people who have this have only one and their risk is about at most one in 10 people who have that at some point in their life will have some kind of blood clot. But the people who have two of them are definitely at high risk of blood clotting. the most important thing is to know your family's history of
all medical conditions, but especially blood clots. Family history is really, really important in determining your personal risk and what testing you should or should not have.
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The most frustrating part about all of this is how preventable it is. And if you could do something to prevent people dying from this, they don't have to die from this. Why wouldn't you do something? And nothing has been done, nothing. mean, are now, thanks partially to the Toronto Ambassador Program and some of the other things that we're doing from an advocacy standpoint at the state and federal level like
our voices are getting louder and louder. But honestly, like when I had my blood clot back in 2018, there was nothing going on. And now all of a sudden you have these amazing people who have been impacted that are lending their voice and they don't have to, you don't have to do this. But the fact that you are doing this is, I don't even think we can measure the impact of it because it truly will save someone else's child.
You know, and that's, that's our goal here. I think, you know, I was listening to you talk about Bryce and I was thinking, my God, we started the year, our podcast with another family. was a mom and dad and they're based in Peoria, Illinois. And their son is Debra Hubbard. He's called, was called two is called two and he was 19 and he played football also in his.
His nickname was the Hulk. And he was also complaining about back pain and not feeling well and having a hard time breathing. And they had wanted to take him into the hospital and the emergency room said, come on Monday, make an appointment with your doctor because everybody's got the flu, the flu's going around. And it's just this dismissal of the signs and symptoms that people are relaying to the medical community.
And so many of them, unfortunately, are so ignorant about this. And so it's, you know, we have a really hard job because not only do we want to educate the public, right? We want the public to be aware of this and be able to recognize these are just, just think that it could be a blood clot and go get it checked out. But then you're depending upon somebody in the clinical setting, in the emergency room, in the clinic, in the hospital who actually believes you and takes the right steps. You had.
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Bryce the baby and you weren't checked to see if you did have some kind of blood mutation, it's just mind boggling to me. The hematologist that tested me, so obviously after the coroner informed us that Bryce had factorified Leiden, they recommended that Fred and I get genetic counseling so that we could understand where the gene mutation came from.
And we thought for sure it would be Fred because of my medical history. thought with all the things that I've been through in life that we would absolutely know if I had a blood clotting disorder. So we went and had the test and, and Fred's came back first and his was negative. And I was like, what is going on here? And then mine came back and the gene came from me. So then that prompted my dad to get tested. My mom is deceased. So.
We needed to understand which side it came from. And of course we thought again, it would be my mom and it was my dad. So it was completely unexpected. But, know, he even said, when my test results came back, that it's a miracle that Bryce is, he was even here that with me having factor five Leiden, he said that it was alarming to him that I even was able to carry
the pregnancy with Bryce to full term. That most people who have fact or most women who have factor five Lyden find out through the process of multiple miscarriages. It's very common. Actually, we get that a lot from women who have, and unfortunately a lot of doctors don't even test for it. And then women have, you know, so many miscarriages, they, you know, can't carry the baby to full term. And, and this little tiny blood test, you know,
could take care of all of this at any range. And I asked that question. said, this is so easy. Why aren't we testing more people for this? And the answer blew my mind. The answer was, because when we identified this genetic mutation in your medical chart, sometimes it makes you ineligible for insurance. And that blew my mind.
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could care less about life insurance, I would prefer to have the information that could have saved my son's life. Yeah. I know I've spoken to people before who knew they were diagnosed with it and they didn't want to share it for fear that it would impact their insurance down the road. They would be considered uninsurable because they have this. There's something very broken in all of this, but... But in the same sentence, then the...
they'll follow up with, but just because you have this genetic risk factor, it doesn't necessarily increase your odds of developing a clot that significantly. It's really only a five to 10 % increase in risk in developing a clot. So I'm not sure that I understand what's happening here, you know? In my head, I keep hearing, what would Bryce do? What would Bryce do?
And so if we kind of draw a line in the sand today and say, okay, what are our goals together with the National Blood Clawed Alliance? know, getting you involved, sharing your story, hopefully educating people in DC and at the state level as well, so we can start putting some policies in place to protect people. And doing this in Bryce's name, like, how do you envision all of this kind of playing out in the next couple of years?
Because we do need to get loud, really, really loud. We do. So, you know, we're just 10 months into even knowing what a blood clot is at this point. And I've kind of felt lost in this time. When I came across the National Blood Clot Alliance, really, I leaned into it because I clearly understand that there's a problem and this problem needs to be solved. It needs to be communicated and it needs to be analyzed.
and it needs to be solved. But I truly had no idea what the solution would be. But that's where I leaned into the National Blood Clot Alliance. And I'm starting to kind of get an idea of what that needs to be. First of all, it needs to be awareness. It needs to be awareness that blood clots exist and they happen to young, healthy people too.
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and they need to know what the symptoms are and what the risk factors are. But after continuing to research this and reading resources that are available from the National Blood Cloud Alliance and listening to this podcast, other episodes of it, I understand that there's also not a lot of data. There's really not a bank of data that is there to collect.
How many cases of blood clots are there in America every day? And how many people survive them? And how many people don't survive them? Do we know what the cause of it was or not? So we don't really have any statistical data that shows that this problem is growing, although we know it's growing because everybody that you talk to has an experience with a blood clot, whether it's happened to them or someone that they know or someone that they love.
Don't you find that in conversation with people that you meet or conversation with people where you talk about this, there's always somebody that they know or they themselves have had a blood clot. I went to a conference this week. I was at the American Society of Hematology over the weekend and you know, I have this National Blood Clot Alliance vest that I wear, big red vest and it has stop clot on the back of it with signs and symptoms on it. You've seen it.
This random woman came up to me and said, I had a blood clot a couple of years ago. I had no idea what it was. And she's like, nobody ever spoke to me. None of my doctors ever spoke to me about blood clots. And so it's just this, I feel like there's this connection across the entire country of people who have been impacted. And so there's all of these different voices, but it's not.
It needs to be more unified in the voice. And when I say let's get loud, I mean, let's all of us get loud, one giant voice, but we don't stop yelling until stuff is done. Having you step up to the plate and take the most horrible possible experience in your family's lifetime and use it to do good. You're amazing. And I'm really looking forward to working with you to put an end to this nonsense.
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you know, because it doesn't have to be like this. And I think we're going to make progress together. But when I get depressed, I need you to help lift me up. And when I get really, really angry, I need you to help bring me down a little bit. But, you know, we're all going to make this happen. But that anger is passion and it is love and, and, and we will channel it to be fuel. And it's, and it's what will motivate us. And like I said, I can just hear Bryce's voice right now. And he is saying, let's go.
He's going, let's do this. Let's go. Terri, thank you for joining us here today on Taking a Breath. We are in awe of you and we are in awe of Bryce and his story. And I'm coming off of this today sad but hopeful that, you know, we're meeting and that this is actually going to move the needle for so many, so many people. So I'm excited to work with you going forward.
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We want to thank Terri again for her vulnerability and strength in sharing Bryce's story. A special thank you to the excellent Dr. Jacob Cogan for his impeccable expertise. Thank you for joining us here today on another episode of Taking a Breath. For more information on risk prevention and community, please visit stoptheclod.org. We know the patient because we are the patient. Together with listeners like you,
we can collectively stop the clock.
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