The medical centre is nothing if not thorough and I first saw a nurse who did the usual blood pressure and oxygen tests. Crucially \u2014 this is the plot twist \u2014 he asked me if I was taking any medications. I am: I have leukaemia and am on a form of targeted chemo that involves me taking what I call my miracle pill every evening, along with three other medicines to tackle the side-effects. It\u2019s a bog-standard form of leukaemia, which means there is lots of research into it, and the pill means my bloods are almost normal while the side-effects are paltry compared with other forms of chemo. Perhaps the life-changing benefit I\u2019ve had from this form of medical technology is one reason why I love other forms of technology.<\/p>\n
![\"Apple](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/bd64f69f-7cd0-446f-9ec3-6fad3bb496b6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
An Apple Watch can detect abnormally high heart rates<\/p>\n
On to the GP, who as I expected diagnosed a chest infection and prescribed some antibiotics. The surgery has the details of what meds I\u2019m on but I am always hypervigilant about these things for obvious reasons and so repeated the list. Antibiotics in hand, I went home and rested.<\/p>\n
That evening I started to get a bad headache, which I assumed was the result of the heaving and shaking from the cough. Hopefully a good night\u2019s sleep would put paid to it.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t get a good night\u2019s sleep. The headache went but instead I developed extreme nausea. It felt as if my brain was floating but being pushed around, like the worst seasickness imaginable, made worse by the heaving when I coughed. If I tried to get up (I am a man in my sixties and night-time peeing is a thing) it felt 20 times worse. I just couldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m used to various ailments and most of the time find the real solution is time. Sleep it off. Wait for it to pass. So that\u2019s what I tried to do. But the hours passed and it didn\u2019t ease \u2014 it got worse.<\/p>\n
I now know that lying there waiting for it to pass was a big mistake. The nausea would not have passed: it was a product of my heart rate having soared to over 120bpm. I live on my own and a heart attack in bed could have killed me.<\/p>\n
At about 5pm my sister called. I managed to blurt out some words and she swung into action. A quick search showed that there is a red flag right at the top of pretty much all info about the antibiotic I had been given, specifically warning about combining it with the chemo pill I was on. Despite that being on my records and my telling both the nurse and the GP, they ignored the info.<\/p>\n
I called the medical centre back and spoke to another GP. He cut to the chase. Stop taking the antibiotic, which should never have been prescribed. More urgently, was I suffering heart palpitations?<\/p>\n
The previous night I\u2019d had a warning message from my Apple Watch that my heart rate was over 120bpm, despite my sitting still. A combination of the fact I was in bed with a massive headache and not thinking properly, and my \u2014 with hindsight idiotic \u2014 assumption that the warning was just because I was coughing and shaking like a maniac, meant I ignored it. As I ignored the subsequent warnings.<\/p>\n