A Crawford woman filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the maker of Prempro, the hormone replacement pill on which clinical trials were halted last year because of health risks to women.

The Kansas City, Mo., law firm behind the suit hopes it will become part of a giant class action, according to Justin Prochnow, the Denver attorney who signed the complaint filed in Denver U.S. District Court.

The Crawford plaintiff, Pennie Alexander, 58, said Prempro nearly killed her. She developed blood clots and spent a week in intensive care, Alexander said.

"This company said it was the best thing that could happen to me," she said. "For about seven years everything was great, and then in a matter of hours I was in major trouble."

It was August of last year, just after clinical trials of Prempro were stopped. All at once, Alexander said, she could barely walk four feet.

"I had my neighbor drive me to the doctor and he admitted me immediately to the hospital in Delta," she said.

The blood clots had traveled from her lungs to her heart, she said.

"I'm healthy now, but to be taken down in a matter of hours is scary."

She now takes blood thinners and has changed her diet. She hopes her doctor will end the treatment by August.

When she was fighting for her life in the ICU, her husband, Lee, got on the Internet to research Prempro, Alexander said. Among other things, he found lawsuits filed elsewhere in the country and the names of the Kansas City attorneys.

She's now a believer in letting menopause happen naturally.

"It worked for all the generations before us," she said. "Now when I get a hot flash, so what? I'm alive. I'm staying that way. I have too much to do."

The Web site of the Kansas City firm, Stueve Siegel Hanson Woody, asks women who have taken Prempro to join the case.

"They are actually, right now, the main people involved in it," said Prochnow, who is with the 17th Street firm of Head & Associates.

Other law firms also have filed large lawsuits against Prempro's manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant Wyeth, in California and elsewhere.

An estimated 6 million women have taken hormone replacements. About half of them were taking Prempro before the trials were halted last summer.

Officials of New Jersey-based Wyeth could not be reached Monday, but its Web site contains a Jan. 8 announcement that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved Prempro's new warning label.

Prempro, which contains the hormones estrogen and progestin, is approved by the FDA for treatment of hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and osteoporosis.