A teenage athlete in highschool said his Apple Watch helped save his life.
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“I’m grateful to Apple”. Luckily, instead of just attributing it to a faulty sensor, His trainer and school nurse verified the reading and then rushed the teen to the hospital, saving his life in the process.
He said that after practice his heart was racing and he had pain in his chest and back when he took deep breaths.
Houle didn’t have to press down on his wrist the old-fashioned way to figure out his heart was going at 145 beats per minute two hours after practice ended though.
Although the disease is fairly common, and extreme case such as Mr. Houle’s can lead to potential death, he was extremely lucky to survive the ordeal due to Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor. He believes that in the absence of his heart rate monitor, his health condition would’ve remained undiagnosed. However, after a thorough medical check-up, he was told he had rhabdomyolysis (muscle tissue breakdown) as a result of his intense physical training. But when he read his heart rate again, he was alarmed.
Doctors found Houle’s heart, liver, and kidneys shutting down, all because of a muscle injury that was releasing protein into his blood stream. There was a good chance that if left untreated he would have lost control of all his muscles and would have died on the spot. Of course, if the product inadvertently saves your life just by doing exactly what it was created to do, it might serve you well too.
Houle will reportedly be forced to miss a portion of his school’s upcoming football season while he recovers, but the outcome could have been tragically different.
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Houle, who is just grateful to be alive, is still under treatment and can not play football yet. “And he said ‘Hello, my name is Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.'” Cook proceeded to offer the Cape Cod teenager a brand-new iPhone and a summer internship at the company’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino next year.
