564 Tennis Champion Serena Williams

Tennis ace Serena Williams is often unstoppable on the court, but a stint with DVT in 2011 nearly took her down, according to an article by ABC News. Williams, now 37, had undergone two surgeries on her foot after cutting it on a piece of glass. After a cross-country flight from New York to Los Angeles, she was having her foot checked out by a doctor when she was rushed to the hospital to treat complications stemming from a previous pulmonary embolism. Between the two surgery recovery periods and the long flight, even this super-fit athlete was at risk for a DVT.

Further complications arose when Williams gave birth to her first daughter in September 2017, noted an article published in February 2018 in the magazine Vogue. A day after her C-section, Williams was feeling short of breath and correctly assumed she was having another pulmonary embolism. Her wound from the C-section came open from her coughing fits, and when she returned to surgery, they found a hematoma in her abdomen and her surgeon placed a filter into a major vein in her leg to prevent more blood clots from traveling into the lungs.

After a successful recovery and time spent with her newborn daughter, Williams was cleared by her doctors to compete in the the 2018 U.S. Open.