For 12-year-old Imani Miles, her Apple Watch is more than just an accessory. She says it saved her life. One night not long ago, Imani’s mother, Jessica Kitchen of Flushing, noticed her daughter’s Apple Watch beeping repeatedly, alerting her that Imani’s heart rate was unusually high.
Without the Apple Watch, Imani might not have survived a rare disease for a while, her mother said. Photography by Chuk Nowak
“It’s really weird because it’s never happened before,” Kitchen says.” It just kept going off.”
Concerned, Kitchen took her daughter to the hospital, where doctors removed Imani’s appendix as a treatment for appendicitis. It was then that they learned she had a neuroendocrine tumor in her appendix, which is very rare in children.
“If [the watch] hadn’t gone off, I probably would have just waited and done nothing for the next few days,” Kitchen says. Her initial feeling was one of gratitude that the watch alerted her to Imani’s condition before it was too late.
By the time doctors discovered Imani’s tumor, the cancer had spread to other parts of her body and required her to undergo surgery to remove it.
Imani’s surgery at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital was successful, removing the cancerous lesions that had developed, and she was recovering at home at press time.
“If she didn’t have that watch, it could have been a lot worse,” Kitchen told The Detroit Times.
In July, the Apple Watch also helped doctors discover a rare tumor in a woman’s heart after she received multiple warnings that her heart was in atrial fibrillation.
