Are You Experiencing Withdrawals? LifeWatch Can Help!

This may make me sound like a hype (however, I believe I'm not alone) but just the thought of not having access to my cell phone gives me separation anxiety! I'm pretty sure that's the typical human being in 2010, but our addiction is still astounding.

This photo is an actual screenshot I took on my iPhone, which is by far my favorite of all the phones I have ever had. If you noticed, my iPhone is also jailbroken and unlocked with the T-Mobile service in the left corner and a picture of my boyfriend as my background. Both things are something not typical of an iPhone that's operating on factory settings.

I had actually thought of changing the background from his picture for the purposes of posting that on my blog, but then I thought, "What the heck? I'll just keep it 100."

Back to the point, according to Gizmodo (I love them) there are approximately 6.8 billion people in the world and there exists 4.6 billion cell phone service contracts. Though I know for a fact many people have more than one phone for just themselves, so the statistic doesn't suggest that 5 billion people of the world have cell phones (I wouldn't be shocked though).

In the article, Gizmodo suggests that the reason cell phones are prominent in even developing countries is because of the benefits they provide to the health industry as well as it's patients. The devices are often used to send patients messages reminding them of appointments and checkups, which got me thinking about my own experiences.

The picture above is a portable heart monitor (specifically a LifeWatch ACT Monitor), it's the exact one my cardiologist instructed me to wear for 3 weeks in October last year. It's basically a walking EKG and tracks abnormalities in my heart's activity in which case it would send messages to the company's center back in Chicago. I also had the option to send manual messages listing my symptoms if I felt an episode (palpitations, lightheadedness, chest pain, etc.) coming on. If it were anything critical, they would contact 911 for services to help me, but what they don't show in that photo is the five electrodes I had to attach to my body everyday that left cords hanging out of my shirts (thus, I wore baggy clothes to cover them) but that's another story.

LifeWatch's website: http://www.lifewatch.com/CardiacEventMonitoring

Anyway, the cell phone acted as a receiver of the information for my heart and because of this new technology my doctor was able to determine at least part of the source that had been causing me to nearly black out (among other things) several times.

None of this excuses why I have a bad habit of sleeping with my iPhone under my pillow or having full phone or texting conversations in my sleep but, it is at least one instance where I really was appreciative of the way technology has continued to expand. So while these pesky little devices usually serve as distractions, one may have very well saved my life.