A British man says if his wife hadn’t gifted him the Apple Watch, he “wouldn’t be here”.
A father of four has credited his Apple Watch with “saving his life” after the device’s heart rate features detected an asymptomatic health issue that made his heart stop 138 times within 48 hours.
David Last, age 54 from Norfolk in the United Kingdom, was given an Apple Watch back in April by his wife Sarah as a birthday gift. Upon wearing it, the electrocardiogram (ECG) feature began giving him alerts saying he has a low resting heart rate of 30 beats per minute (bpm) on almost 3,000 separate occurrences.
The normal resting heart rate for an adult male is supposed to be around 60 to 100 bpm. David’s heart rate sunk as low as 30 bpm. Because of the huge number of alerts, he just assumed that the device was defective, given that he was leading an active lifestyle with no family history of heart problems. His wife persuaded him otherwise to visit the doctor, who then referred him to a cardiologist.
After undergoing an MRI scan in May and seeing the results in July, he was given a 48-hour ECG to monitor his heart rate. David said he finally realized the problem was really serious when the hospital personnel sounded “really panicky” on the phone.
He said, “As soon as I got there, they had a bed ready.”
He got there just in the nick of time, as doctors informed him he had a third-degree heart blockage because a part of his heart was wearing away. It is a situation that can lead to a sudden heart attack.
Over the course of 48 hours, his heart stopped 138 times in 10-second intervals, mostly occurring while he was asleep. Other areas of his heart had to take over to resume blood flow before the problem started all over again.
In August, David underwent surgery and doctors placed a pacemaker into his heart to help control his heartbeat and prevent the heart from beating too slowly.
David said, “If she hadn’t bought me my Apple watch for my birthday, I wouldn’t be here. I will always be eternally grateful to her for it. Apart from charging it, it’s always staying on me now.
I had no symptoms whatsoever. We even went to Italy for 10 days for our honeymoon – I had no idea anything was wrong. Even the doctors were amazed.”
He has since returned to work and his wife is supporting him on the road to long-term recovery.