With wearable technology, we’re getting closer and closer to live physical diagnostics. We’re able to track all sorts of details about our bodies throughout the day-to-day. A woman from Philadelphia was given an early warning of her stage 4 cancer from an Oura health tracking ring months before doctors found it.
30-year-old Cattie of Philadelphia wears an Oura ring in order to check her biometrics. But it started giving her rather alarming alerts. In the night, Cattie had been suffering from sweats. She was cold, but drenched every single night.
Her ring popped up with a warning, telling her she was “showing signs of major illness.” This, combined with the uncontrollable sweating at night, pushed her to go and see a doctor. However, they didn’t find anything wrong initially.
Speaking with Today, she said, “I had all these vague symptoms. And I had seen my primary care provider, I had seen a GI doctor, I got a colonoscopy and endoscopy to check for any type of internal bleeding — all of that was negative.” However, her Oura ring was still telling her there was something wrong.
Hellish Holiday
For months, Cattie suffered from poor health. Despite repeated visits to the doctor, only her Oura ring could find something wrong.”If your temperature is so high above your normal, they just assume that you’re sick,” she said of her ring’s results. “I did ignore it for a few months because I (thought), ‘Maybe it’s just where I am in my cycle.’ I was thinking of every excuse in the book as to why it could possibly not be accurate.”
The doctors even checked for signs of cancer, but found nothing. It wasn’t until she went to Iceland for a holiday that the situation almost became fatal. While walking through the capital, her breathing became laboured.
“I was walking around Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland, with my friend, and I looked at him, and I was like, ‘Gosh, what is the elevation here? I feel like I can’t breathe.” Her friend informed her that she was at sea level.
Her shortness of breath resulted in a visit to the hospital on holiday, where she was found to be drowning in fluid that was filling her lungs. They drained it and sent her home, where scans revealed that her Oura ring was right all the time.
She was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma.