My School Nurse Told Me I Was “Faking It”… Then My Heart Stopped In The Hallway

Warnings Ignored and the Nurse’s Dismissal

My school nurse said I was faking it, then my heart stopped in the hallway. The notification appeared on my Apple Watch during first period calculus: “Irregular heart rhythm detected. It is recommended you contact your doctor.”

I stared at the screen while Mrs. Abernathy explained derivatives, my pencil hovering over blank notebook paper. The watch had been buzzing all morning with warnings I’d been ignoring for three days now.

High heart rate 189 BPM, low heart rate 54 BPM, irregular rhythm. The numbers jumped around like they couldn’t decide what my heart was supposed to be doing.

I pressed my palm against my chest and felt it hammering, then stuttering, then racing again. Something was definitely wrong, but I’d convinced myself it was just stress from college applications and AP exams.

By lunch, my watch had logged 14 irregular rhythm notifications. I sat in the cafeteria with my best friend Zara, pushing food around my tray while she talked about her disastrous chemistry lab.

My chest felt tight—not painful exactly, but compressed, like someone had wrapped rubber bands around my rib cage. Every few minutes, my heart would do this weird flip-flop thing that made me catch my breath.

“You okay? You look really pale.” Zara noticed me rubbing my sternum and stopped mid-sentence.

I showed her my watch. The heart rate graph looked like a seismograph during an earthquake, spiking and plummeting in jagged peaks.

“Dude, that’s not normal. You need to see the nurse.” Her eyes widened.

Nurse Campbell’s office smelled like hand sanitizer and fake floral air freshener. She was typing on her computer when I knocked, not bothering to look up.

“Come in.” She said.

I sat in the plastic chair across from her desk and waited while she finished whatever was more important than a student seeking medical attention. Finally, she swiveled toward me with this expression like I’d already wasted enough of her time.

“What’s the problem?” She asked.

I held out my wrist, showing her the watch face displaying my current heart rate of 178. I’ve been getting these warnings for three days, my heart rate keeps jumping all over, and my chest feels tight.

She glanced at the watch for maybe two seconds before leaning back in her chair.

“Smartwatches aren’t medical devices. They’re designed to make anxious teenagers panic. You’re fine.” She stated.

I pulled up the Health app on my phone, showing her the data from the past 72 hours. Dozens of irregular rhythm notifications, heart rate recordings that looked nothing like the steady patterns from previous months.

“But look at this. Something’s definitely wrong. It never did this before.” I said.

She barely looked at the screen before waving her hand dismissively.

“Those devices have a huge false positive rate. They’re basically expensive anxiety generators. Every kid comes in here now thinking they’re having a heart attack because their watch told them so.” She said.

My chest tightened more; whether from actual cardiac distress or frustration, I couldn’t tell. My chest really hurts though, and I feel dizzy sometimes when I stand up.

She typed something into her computer, probably noting that I was a hypochondriac wasting her time.

“That’s anxiety. Classic presentation. You’re probably stressed about something: college applications, boyfriend problems.” She replied.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to demand she actually examine me, take my pulse manually, listen to my heart, do something besides dismiss me because I was a teenager with a smartwatch.

But I’d been raised to respect authority, to trust adults who supposedly knew better. Can you at least check my blood pressure or something, just to make sure?

Nurse Campbell sighed like I’d asked her to perform open-heart surgery. She pulled out the blood pressure cuff and wrapped it around my arm with unnecessary force, pumping it up while staring at the wall clock like she was calculating how much time I was stealing from her.

The cuff deflated and she unwrapped it.

“120 over 75. Perfectly normal. See? You’re fine.” She said.

“This is what I’m talking about. You’ve worked yourself into such a state that you’ve convinced yourself something’s wrong when there’s absolutely nothing wrong.” She continued.

She turned back to her computer, conversation over. I sat there for another moment, feeling stupid and dismissed and scared all at once.

“But what if it’s not anxiety? What if something really is wrong with my heart?” I asked.

Now she looked annoyed, actually annoyed that I wasn’t accepting her diagnosis and leaving.

“Listen, I’ve been a school nurse for 18 years. I see kids every single day who think they’re dying because they felt their heartbeat, or got a headache, or saw something on the internet.” She said.

“99% of the time, it’s nothing. You are 16 years old. 16-year-olds don’t have heart problems. They have anxiety problems.” She continued.

“You need to stop obsessing over your watch, and stop Googling symptoms, and go back to class.” She stood up, clearly done with me.

“If you’re still feeling anxious tomorrow, we can talk about a referral to the counseling office for stress management techniques.” She added.

I walked out of her office feeling worse than when I went in. The tightness in my chest hadn’t gone away, and my watch buzzed again: irregular rhythm detected.