A woman has revealed how her Oura Ring alerted her to her severe health issues – months before doctors figured out what was wrong with her.
In April last year, Casey Cattie, 30, began waking up in the morning soaked in sweat with no idea why.
Little did she know, the ongoing night sweats was a symptom of something serious – Stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma.
The nurse, from Philadelphia, had been wearing an Oura ring to bed and checking the data in the mornings, which informed her she was ‘showing sings of major illness.’
An Oura ring is a smart ring designed to track various health metrics, including sleep, activity, heart rate, heart rate variability, body temperature, and respiratory rate.
At the time, Casey was wearing the device to track her menstrual cycle, and it kept warning her that her temperature was spiking overnight.
‘I was seeing all these fevers [on my Oura ring’s tracking] but nothing else,’ she told Today recently, noting that her symptoms were ‘vague.’
‘If your temperature is so high above your normal, [the ring] just assumes that you’re sick.’
In April last year, Casey Cattie (pictured), 30, began waking up in the morning soaked in sweat with no idea why
Casey admitted that she didn’t think much of it at first, and initially thought it had something to do with where she was at in her menstrual cycle.
‘You see so many crazy things on a daily basis [working in medicine] that you could never think would happen to you,’ she explained.
But as the night sweats worsened and the continuous warning from her Oura ring, she decided to try to get to the bottom of it.
Her bloodwork came back normal, however – only showing an iron deficiency – so she went on to see multiple different doctors, and months passed without a diagnosis.
‘I had seen my primary care provider, I had seen a GI doctor, I got a colonoscopy and endoscopy to check for any type of internal bleeding – all of that was negative,’ she recalled.
She even saw a hematologist oncologist to rule out cancer, but the doctor had a ‘very low suspicion’ that she was dealing with cancer because her bloodwork was normal.
Despite being given the all-clear, Casey’s health took a severe turn while she was on vacation in Iceland celebrating her 30th birthday in the spring – roughly eight months after the Oura rings’ first warning.
‘I was walking around Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland, with my friend, and I looked at him, and I was like, “Gosh, what is the elevation here? I feel like I can’t breathe,”‘ she recalled, adding that they were at sea level.
Casey admitted she initially ignored it, thinking it had something to do with where she was at in her menstrual cycle
Despite being given the all-clear initially by doctors, Casey’s health took a severe turn when she was in Iceland celebrating her 30th birthday and she was diagnosed with cancer
She thought maybe she had the flu, but her heath continued to deteriorate, and it got to the point where struggled to walk without losing her breath and lost her appetite.
At first, Casey delayed going to a doctor because she was worried about what the cost would be, but the day before she was due to leave she was so short of breath that she knew she had to go to the emergency room.
Doctors diagnosed her with a ‘massive pleural effusion,’ which is when fluid sits around the lungs, making it difficult to breathe, and drained it so she could fly home.
‘I had over a gallon of fluid in my chest,’ she explained. ‘I was drowning internally for the week leading up to my diagnosis.’
The emergency room doctors told also gave Casey CT scans, suspecting cancer because they detected enlarged lymph nodes.
They also recommended she undergo a lymph node biopsy and PET scan.
When she got home, Casey had difficulty breathing again as her chest had filled with more fluid, so she went to the emergency room where they admitted her and ran some tests.
She underwent a PET scan two days later, which ‘lit up like a Christmas tree,’ with tumors showing on her lungs, esophagus, and spleen.
Casey was eventually given the diagnosis of Stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma, immediately undergoing a round of chemotherapy while still in the hospital.
According to Casey, doctors said the lymphoma was so large it impacted the lymph nodes deep in her chest, causing it to fill with fluid.
‘It was causing irritation within my chest cavity, and that was causing my body to secrete more pleural fluid and continue to re-accumulate fluid in my chest,’ she explained.
An Oura ring (seen) is a smart ring designed to track various health metrics, including sleep, activity, heart rate, heart rate variability, body temperature, and respiratory rate
Casey is now halfway through her treatment, undergoing 12 rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy every two weeks.
She said it has diminished her appetite, and she’s experienced some nerve damage as well as feeling ‘chronically dehydrated.’
She said her Oura ring still picks up when she’s not feeling well – particularly after she’s had treatment.
Casey advised everyone to seek medical treatment if they feel something isn’t right.
‘I went eight months with doctors who missed my diagnosis – doctors with 40 years’ experience treating lymphoma and specializing in the kind of cancer I have. I trusted them,’ she pointed out.
‘I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus here. Basically, if you have a gut feeling something is wrong, you need to trust that gut feeling,’ she urged.
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