One mom is thanking Apple after she says the company's smartwatch saved her teenage daughter's life.
According to WFTS Tampa Bay, 18-year-old Floridian Deanna Recktenwald was sitting in church when the Apple Watch she had received for Christmas told her to "seek medical attention" because her resting heart rate was 160 beats per minute (60 to 100 beats a minute is normal, according to the Mayo Clinic).
The teen had a headache and was slightly short of breath, but had no other symptoms. She alerted her mom, Stacey Recktenwald, a registered nurse, who at first wasn't overly concerned because her daughter has no previous medical conditions.
But, over the next couple hours, the Apple Watch kept giving Deanna the same warning as her heart rate climbed to 190. She went to urgent care and was told to immediately go to the emergency room because her heart rate was still abnormally high. Doctors there determined she was in kidney failure and her kidneys were only functioning at 20 percent.
"If it wasn't for her Apple Watch alarming her about her [heart rate] we wouldn't have discovered her kidney issue," Recktenwald wrote in a letter to Apple obtained by WFTS Tampa Bay. "I honestly feel that your Apple Watch saved my daughter's life. She is heading off for college in August, and her condition may have been overlooked and if it wasn't caught now the doctor said she would have needed a kidney transplant. Now I can send her off to college and know that she can monitor her [heart rate] and seek attention if it alarms her again."
Apple CEO Tim Cook posted the story on Twitter Monday writing: "Stories like Deanna's inspire us to dream bigger and push harder every day."
The Apple Watch comes with its own Heart Rate monitor app. You can tell it to notify you of any dramatic rise in your heart rate during inactive periods.