Brady Ogle knew something was wrong with his body. It took the Apple Watch to confirm it.
24 hours after New Year’s Day, Ogle reported for work like any other workday at an AT&T store in Granbury, Texas, just south of Dallas. For the preceding three months, the 30-year-old hadn’t been feeling well. He visited his doctor but was told he might be suffering from a mild case of indigestion and to simply manage it from home with a proper diet.
Still, his symptoms kept preying on his mind. Something was wrong. He could feel it.
But on this particular day, things would be unlike any other. “All of a sudden, I started feeling my heart race really quick,” he told Cult of Mac. “Then, my Apple Watch started going off telling me my heart rate was elevated and ‘you’ve been idle.’ I thought, ‘OK. This is different.’”
He dismissed the warning. But a day later, he awoke from a dream at 4 a.m. feeling like, as Ogle described it, “My head was in a sandbox.”
He drank two bottles of water, fell asleep, and woke back up a little later to drink some more. Seven hours later, he had drunk seven bottles of fluid but still felt dehydrated. Determined to go to work, he arrived with his Apple Watch on, but couldn’t focus.
Working with a customer, Ogle’s watch warned him again of an elevated heart rate of 140 beats per minute. Minutes later, it warned him again. This time, it read 150 bpm.
’Something wasn’t right’
“I felt drunk. I wasn’t balanced. Something wasn’t right,” he said.
Apparently, he collapsed. Minutes later, in a state of forgetfulness, Ogle found himself on a stretcher being pushed into an ambulance.
“I remember the attendant grabbing my Apple Watch because it was going off while I was on the stretcher telling him my heart rate was really high,” he said.
The attendant then realized Ogle was in distress. It was only after hooking him up to a heart monitor and pumping fluids into him that Ogle’s situation stabilized. Once at the hospital, doctors determined he had ulcerative colitis, a chronic bowel disease that causes inflammation in the digestive tract. If not treated properly, his life would be in serious danger.
“My body just started rejecting anything I was putting in,” Ogle said. “Food. Water. My heart was under severe stress because of dehydration.”
While in the hospital, Ogle’s condition worsened as a result of ulcerative colitis. Three times, his heart started beating sporadically and didn’t pump any blood to his organs — a condition known as ventricular dyssynchrony. Doctors later confirmed that the episodes caught by Ogle’s Apple Watch leading up to his collapse at work were warnings of ongoing heart failure.
“That is what my Apple Watch caught,” Ogle said, quoting the doctors. “[But they] also told me that if I wouldn’t have had a heart monitor on [while at the hospital], that I may have laid there and died.”
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Recovery
For Ogle, January was a month of recovery. He almost lost 2.5 feet of damaged intestine. His doctors now have him on a chemotherapy-style infusion treatment. The regimen helps prevent his body from producing too much protein and helps regulate immune cells and inflammation in the body. Ogle’s condition is so severe, he will have to undergo infusion treatment for the rest of his life every few months.
“I can live a normal, healthy life as long as I don’t miss any medications or my body doesn’t build antibodies towards the infusion,” he said. “I really do now have a high risk of colon cancer, so the rest of my life will very much be about checking and maintaining my condition.”
Apple Watch: The ‘gimmick’ that saves lives
As bad as it got for Ogle, it obviously could have been worse.
“The Apple Watch is what made my boss call 9-1-1,” he said. “It saved my life and I truly feel that.”
Ogle’s is one of dozens of real-life stories that have crossed the desk of Apple CEO Tim Cook. It’s owners praise the device for saving their lives and tout its health benefits. Apple Watches with watchOS 5 or later are equipped with a Heart Rate app, which lets users check their heart rate and receive notifications when it exceeds a certain threshold.
In December 2018, Apple showed video testimony from other owners who said the smartwatch helped notify them of health problems and alleviate medical conditions.
Since 2015, many U.S. hospital groups have been putting Apple’s HealthKit service to work to monitor patients’ health. Apple is working with numerous health organizations to improve the accuracy and capability of the device. A number of doctors recommend Apple Watch as a monitoring device for patients who can afford it.
Ogle wrote to Cook last month. He received a personal response from the Apple exec, thanking him for his email and wishing him the best.
“I thought that was amazing,” Ogle said. “He responded to me in about three hours. So, that made me feel really good.”
Ogle has had an Apple Watch since the first model released in 2015. But even as an early adopter, he said he didn’t really grasp the device’s potential. “I never really thought of it as a tool,” he said. “I always kind of thought of it as a gimmick.”
Now, Ogle acknowledges the device’s abilities — and how he might not be alive to celebrate 2020 without it.
“If I hadn’t have had my Apple Watch on, I wouldn’t have ever known how bad my situation was,” he said. “I would have gone home and just tried to deal with it.”
