\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wzzm13.com\/assets\/shared-images\/icons\/arrow-circle-down.svg\"){kind=icon}
<\/p>\nDavid Van Houten had a stroke and couldn’t get up. The neurosurgeon told him that if care had been delayed by 20 minutes, he would’ve been dead. <\/p>\n
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. \u2014 A former 911 dispatcher is thankful for a piece of wearable technology that helped him get critical medical care when every minute mattered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Van Houten, 65, said he took a hard fall recently while out on a nightly walk with his dog.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His Apple Watch detected his tumble, calling 911 and alerting his emergency contacts to his location.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\n This story continues below.
<\/p>\n
“I think I’m OK. I just need to get up, but I can’t get up,” Van Houten recalled about the initial fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He soon learned his situation was much more serious.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His medical team said he had a stroke and time was of the essence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As soon as I hit the ground, my Apple Watch started shaking, buzzing, and beeping, and telling me that if I didn’t hit the right button, emergency services would be notified,” Van Houten said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His Apple Watch contacted his wife and emergency services. Help was on the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So they loaded me up and headed down to Corwell emergency,” Van Houten said. “I remember them talking to me over that speaker that you hear on the MRI. We’re giving you an MRI, and we’ve located the clot.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The clot was moving to an area that would’ve given him a massive stroke, but thanks to the quick response of emergency responders, he had a better outcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“‘I just got your clot. You’re going to be okay, buddy,'” Van Houten remembers his care team saying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He spent the next four days in the hospital and is incredibly thankful for all who worked to save his life. It all started with his Apple Watch, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Van Houten had a stroke and couldn’t get up. The neurosurgeon told him that if care had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[49,48,195,61],"class_list":["post-874120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-gadgets","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}