A Hawke’s Bay woman discovered she had leukaemia after her Apple Watch notified her of an elevated heart rate.
Psychiatrist Amanda Faulkner, 51, had been using her husband Mike’s Apple Watch for a number of years before deciding to treat herself to her own.
The watch measures health metrics while the wearer sleeps that can signal changes in the body, including heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and sleep duration.
But, being fit and healthy, she believed her new watch to be faulty as her resting heart rate was too high.
However, a heart rate notification and vitals app then began reporting outliers every morning and her heart rate increased to over 90 BPM.
“I kept on ignoring it until it got to the point where it was literally screaming at me.”
Faulkner visited her GP, who advised her to go to the emergency department for further tests.
Within four hours, Faulkner was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia.
“It’s like a nuclear bomb going off in your life,” she said.
“I’m a very optimistic, cheerful person, and I’m a strong person, but you never know how you’re going to react.
“I felt numb, I felt distraught. It’s like you’re on a rollercoaster that you never chose to be on but once you’re on it, you just have to sit there and go along for the ride.”
Faulkner was told that if she had delayed medical attention for another 48 hours, she could have died.
“I was just on the verge of multiple organ failure. I was literally hours away from death, so I got rushed down to Palmerston North Hospital, started on chemotherapy, and I’m still here.”
She now wants to encourage others to see their doctors if they notice any vague symptoms that aren’t going away – especially women who often “feel like you’re being palmed off” and have medical concerns brushed off as “woman problems”.
“Be an advocate for your own wellbeing,” Faulkner said. “The earlier you get on and treat something the better the outcome.”
Faulkner is currently in remission. However, her rare type of cancer has a high chance of relapse.
She has been told she needs a stem cell transplant but there isn’t a bed available until July.
Faulkner – one of two psychiatrists in the country specialising in dissociative identity disorder – is pushing for added support in the health system to relieve the long wait times.
“The health system needs to fix me so I can get out there and fix other people.”