My final race of the season started at 4:30am when my friend Amy and I headed down to Brooklyn for the 7 am start of the Rock ânâ Roll Half Marathon. We had trained together for months getting ready for this day â 5am runs throughout Amyâs neighborhood during the week, long runs on the bike path on the weekends, keeping each other honest and on track when we were away on business trips – we were pumped and ready! It was a beautiful morning, unseasonably warm for October in NY, perfect for running. As we waited in our corral for the start, I couldn’t decide what was a more beautiful sight â the red and purple fireball lighting up the morning as it slowly emerged from the city skyline, or the dozens of available teal and white port-a-potties lining the streets for me to choose from, as I try and squeeze the last drops out of my anxious bladder.
As we inched our way to the start line, we took pictures and selfies with our phones â beaming with excitement, already feeling accomplished that we had made it this far! I even got in a few âHere We Go!â posts on Facebook before we heard the buzzer, and then we were off! As we weaved our way through the streets of Brooklyn, Amy and I chatted here and there to help pass the timeâŚ.like when we ran by the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Amy remembered a dear friendâs wedding, and as I passed every penny glued in the tar on the streets, I talked about my superstition and how it was killing me that I couldnât pick them all up (Instead, I sang, See a penny, pick it up, all day long youâll have good luck, to myself with every one we passed).
As we crossed the 10-mile mark and ran through a grand archway entering Prospect Park, we were feeling pretty good. We were starting to get a little crampy in the legs and certainly tired, but we only had a 5K left (which we had run many times before), so we were confident that we could push through the loop in the park to the end. At about mile 12.5, with just over a half mile left to the finish line, and with the big hill behind us, I was already starting to celebrate in my head. I was envisioning the next round of pictures and selfies that I was going to post on Facebook, this time sporting our well-earned medals around our necks, captioned âWe Did It!â I could hear the music from the Finishers Festival faintly over The Black Crowes cranked up in my headphones, and I could feel the energy from the crowd of spectators waving their neon poster board signs full of encouragement, as they attempted to carry us to the end. I looked over at Amy to give her a high-five and a âWe Got This!â and I could immediately tell that the party was over. She was gray and looked like she was about to get sick. When I touched her arm to see if she was ok, she was cold with goose bumps, but sweating at the same time. When she looked at me, she saw right through me and didnât even know who I was. I knew I needed to get help right away.
Fast forward to the medical tent where doctors are now working on her and asking me for her information and medical history, as she was not able to answer their questions for herself â name, birthdate, allergies, any medical conditions that they should be aware of. Some of the answers I knew, others I did not. Fortunately, I had her husbandâs phone number in my contacts and was able to get in touch with him right away to find out the answers. Once Amy was stable enough, she was transported to a nearby hospital where she was further treated for what turned out to be Hyperthermia (heat stroke). I was then asked again for all of her medical information from a new team of doctors and nurses, in addition to her insurance information, as she was still not able to answer and her husband had not yet arrived. Well, after three days in the hospital, I am beyond ecstatic to report that Amy was finally discharged and is on the mend. I am thankful every day that she is going to be fine, but it wasnât without a few life lessons learned along the way.
I tend to think of myself as a pretty prepared person, always preparing for the worst. But in this situation, I wasnât prepared at all, I felt that I just got lucky (the superstitious side of me gives all the credit to those pennies I chanted to on the course). In all the things that I worried about and prepared for that morning, helping Amy in a medical emergency was not one of them. When I left her in the ER with her husband late Saturday afternoon, all I could think about was what if I didnât have her husbandâs number in my phone?  What if I couldnât get the answers to their questions? What if she was alone? What if it was me? Does Amy have my husbandâs number in her contacts?
On my way home from the hospital I got to thinking, there HAS to be an app for this. One where someone can store their medical information, or where they can put in their emergency contacts, and one that is easily accessible if they are (god forbid) incapacitated. I know I have my husband listed as my âICE” contact (in case of an emergency), but that wouldnât do me or anyone trying to help me really any good because I have a lock on my phone. Maybe I can take a picture of my ICE info and have it as my lock screen, I thought. Or maybe there is a button that could be added to my lock screen that could keep all this information accessible without having to have my code. I felt so strongly about this that if I couldnât find an app with this functionality, I was committed to learning how to develop one myself, or pay someone to develop it for me. Fortunately, after a little bit of research, I found out that Apple had already done the work for me! And to my surprise, itâs actually a standard function that came with my iPhone 6 as part of their Health app. With all of the coverage and hype that is given to any Apple launch, I would have thought the media would have made this front page news, but I guess itâs not as sexy as TouchID, so it got buried in the back with the classifieds.
The Health app holds personal medical information and is linked to the Emergency button on the phone keypad. So even if the phone is locked, the information is accessible. Like many people I have spoken to since I discovered the app, I had never even opened it. Most, also like me, had it buried in a folder with all of the other apps that came standard with their phones and take up precious space but canât be deleted, like GarageBand, iTunes U and Keynote.
Well I am not burying the news anymore, it is now on my front page!  I cannot stress this point enoughâŚEVERYONE should take the 3 minutes to set up this app â you, your husband, your wife, your partner, your kids, your parents, your friends, your co-workers, people you meet in the grocery store checkoutâŚEVERYONE! It takes no time at all and the results could someday be a matter of life or death.
The set-up process could not have been easier:
- I opened the Heath app and came to a screen that described the Medical ID. Â I then clicked on the Create Medical ID link
- When the set-up screen popped up, I made sure the âShow When Lockedâ was activated so my information could be viewed even when my iPhone was locked. Â If I didnât, no one would be able to see the information or call the emergency contacts without first unlocking my phone…defeating the whole purpose.
- I filled in all of necessary information – name, date of birth, medical conditions, allergies, medications and critical notes about my health. I also added my Insurance ID information here.
- I selected several emergency contacts. These are the phone numbers that will be able to be dialed even if my phone is locked. I chose both my husband and my mother, as I have no idea who will be reachable at the time. On my kidâs phones, I made sure to include both my husband and I, as well as my mother and their pediatrician.
- I also made sure to add a picture, just to reassure whoever is trying to help me that they have my information.
- Lastly, to save my information I hit Done in the upper-right-hand corner.
To test the app to make sure I set it up correctly I first locked my phone. Since it knows my fingerprint, I asked my husband to try to open my phone to bring up the keypad. In the lower left corner, I cautiously hit the word Emergency, as I had always thought it immediately dialed 911. Instead, a special dialing screen popped up where not only could I dial 911, I could also hit the Medical ID button. When I pressed the button, it brought up all of the medical information that I entered when I set up the app, in addition to the ability to call the emergency contacts I listed.  Whoo hoo!!  I then immediately called a family meeting and had everyone go through the same process on their phones.
If you are anything like my husband, you might be hesitant to put so much information out there for anyone that picks up your phone to see. So include only as much or as little as you feel comfortable sharing. At a minimum I would suggest at least one emergency contact and a picture. And if you are worried about Russian hackers, according to reports at 9to5 Mac, your information will be backed up on iCloud, but will be automatically encrypted. The information you store in Medical ID is not shared with other apps â it is for you and any medical professionals taking care of you in case of an emergency.
For all of my Android friends, there is a comparable free Medical ID – ICE app ready for you to download and share. Â You can download it here from Google Play.
When I woke up that race morning I had my own ideas of how the day was going to go – help Amy cross the finish line sooner than she had in her last half marathon, relax, and just have fun with a good friend – but at the end of the day I had no control over it. And thatâs my point here. You never know when an emergency will happen, and isnât it better to be prepared than lucky?
Please share this with everyone you know (and don’t know!)âŚhave I stressed EVERYONE enough?! Not only will it encourage people to put in their own information, it will also create awareness and teach people to look for the information in the event that they are helping someone else.