A Hawkes Bay woman discovered she had leukaemia after thinking her Apple Watch was faulty as she believed her resting heart rate was too high.
Amanda Faulker had been using her husbands for quite some time before buying 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.
Faulker still believed her watch was faulty when she kept getting heart rate notifications 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.”
Faulker went to her doctor who instructed her to go to the emergency department for further testing.
Within hours, Faulkner was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, a rare form of the cancer.
“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,” she added.
Faulkner was told that if she didn’t seek medical treatment 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.”
Faulker is currently in remission, but due to her rare type of cancer, the chance it could relapse is high.
She is one of two psychiatrists in the country specialising in dissociative identity disorder and is advocating for added support in the health system.
