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That’s a small price to pay for remaining upright. My blood is now kept therapeutic-or “non-clotty,” as I like to think of it-by a blood thinner that I’ll most likely have to take for the rest of my life. If I hadn’t gone to the nurse when I did, I might have shared his fate. I also later learned that a grandfather who I thought died of a heart attack actually died from a cardiac embolism, a blood clot that reached his heart. A blood test would later reveal that I have “Factor V Leiden,” a genetic condition in which 5 percent of those age 50 and older who have it develop clots. My job is fairly sedentary, but not unusually so, and my commute is long, but not long enough to convince the doctors it was a contributing cause. What confounded the doctors is that I didn’t have any of the usual triggers for blood clots: I had no recent trauma, no recent prolonged airplane travel, and no family history of blood clots. In the upcoming watchOS 3, I’ll be able to hold down the side button to engage the SOS feature, which can call 911 for me if I ever have another medical emergency. That’s what was causing both my shortness of breath and rapid heartbeat. It was that blockage that was making it hard for my heart to move enough oxygenated blood to keep my body going. One became what’s called a “saddle clot,” meaning it was wrapped at the fork of two pulmonary arteries, blocking the flow of blood in both. Those clots were traveling up to my lung, where they were blocking the arteries to my heart. As it turned out, my leg was throwing out blood clots- lots of clots, I learned. It wasn’t a heart attack after all – in fact, my heart was very strong, which probably saved my life. The rest of the story is fairly straightforward. In what was probably not my brightest move of the day, I tried to bargain with them to let me drive myself to the hospital, and when that failed, insisted on walking to the ambulance instead of being wheeled out on a stretcher.
![heart rate and sleep monitor watch heart rate and sleep monitor watch](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0470/0345/products/product-image-713527048_grande.jpg)
So did the paramedics who came and took me from my office in an ambulance and fed me nitroglycerin. Although she never said it outright, I’m pretty sure she suspected a heart attack. My nurse ran the rest of my vitals, including blood pressure (very high) and an EKG, which she sent to the company doctor on call. (It was a story I’d repeat to seemingly endless teams of doctors over the next six days.) Reluctantly, I went to my company nurse’s office, salad still in hand, and told her what had happened. In the end, it was that cold, objective number staring at me from my watch that finally got me to believe there was something real going on, something I couldn’t just ignore or wish away. If not for the Apple Watch, I wouldn’t have known what my resting heart rate should have been, or that my elevated heart rate was definitely a cause for concern. That’s usually my heart rate during a good elliptical workout, and here I was, standing still on a flight of stairs. I raised my Apple Watch again and swiped up to view the heart rate glance. I felt so winded I had to pause on the stairwell-I just didn’t have the strength to go on. The pounding of my heart became so strong I could feel it in my ears. I started to carry my lunch back up the stairs and the gasping returned.
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The shortness of breath returned, but I was determined to ignore it. I was thinking about packing lists and making a mental note not to forget my Apple Watch charger as I walked down the two flights of stairs to the cafeteria. Stairway to Heavenīy lunchtime, I had made up my mind not to mention anything to my wife and to go ahead with our trip. It was a trip I’d been looking forward to for months-and I wasn’t about to let a little shortness of breath mess it up. I had too much to do, lots of work to finish, and I was scheduled to leave that afternoon on a 780-mile drive with my family to celebrate my daughter’s graduation from her Master’s program. Still, I kept trying to convince myself it was something that would just pass. No matter how long I was at rest, it never dipped below 100 beats per minute. As I sat at my desk that morning, I frequently checked my heart rate with my watch.