Five years ago, the Apple Watch might have saved my life

A little more than five years ago, in the early hours of my birthday, no less, I woke up to what I thought was that intense and prolonged alert that the Apple Watch gives you when it’s about to go dead.

That wasn’t it.

My brush with the ECG alert

Apple Watch was actually informing me it had picked up signs of an irregular heart rhythm suggestive of atrial fibrillation. Idiot that I am, I went back to sleep. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t fix it. About 40 minutes later, I gave…