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Last August, Casey Catty began waking up in the morning.
“I wasn’t too hot, I was under the fans, so it was actually cold,” Catty, 30, of Philadelphia, tells Today.com. “It was a totally wet night sweat.”
She wore the Oola ring that a friend had given her, and since the start of Night Switzerland, it often informed her that she was “showing a song of a big illness.” Catty saw multiple doctors reach the bottom of her body change, but could not find the cause.
This spring, Catty experienced a medical emergency while traveling to Iceland. There, the doctor suspected he had cancer.
In April she was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma. Only her woolering looked like something was wrong with her heath.
“I was watching all these fevers, but there was nothing else,” she says. “I had all these vague symptoms. And I saw my primary care provider, I saw a doctor with GI, I had colonoscopy and endoscopy to check for all types of internal bleeding – it was all negative.”
Night sweats and fever
At the end of last summer, Catty continued to wake up in night sweats.
“They were slowly getting worse,” she says. “I didn’t think about it much. It’s really sad.”
The pediatric nurse downplayed her symptoms.
At the time, she wore welling and an Apple Watch to track her menstrual cycle and compare data. The ring picked up the catty’s spike temperature.
“If your temperature is higher than your usual, they assume you’re sick,” she says. “I ignored it for a few months because I thought, ‘I thought it was just where I was in the cycle.” I was thinking about all the excuses in the book about why it might not be accurate. ”
After experiencing night sweats and fever for several months, Casey Catty visited several doctors to understand what was going on in her health. It was still several months before she was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. (Courtesy Casey Catty)
A few months later, Catty became worried and set up appointments with various doctors to understand why she had experienced night sweats and fever.
“My doctors did all the tests,” she says. “My blood work was completely normal except for the iron shortage.
She met with a hematologist oncologist to rule out cancer.
“She said there was very little suspicion that the thing I was dealing with was a malignant tumor,” recalls Katty. “All my bloodshed was normal.”
Doctors also said that Catty had no palpable lymph nodes, which could be a sign of cancer (although it is often a sign of viral infection).
Catty still felt like something was wrong, but the doctors didn’t find the cause of her fever, so she continued her life. To celebrate her 30th birthday, she planned a trip to Iceland and felt “excited to explore a new country.”
But “things were off the ground,” she recalls. “I was walking around Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, with friends. I saw him. “Well, what’s the altitude here? I feel like I can’t breathe.”
Her friend replied that they were “literally on the surface of the sea.” Catty remembers thinking she had the flu. That’s why she struggled with breathing. On the trip, she continued to struggle walking, gradually feeling unwell and losing her appetite. Finally, Catty was very weak.
“I couldn’t even stop and go to the restaurant next door without stopping to hold my breath three or four times,” she says.
Catty postponed the doctor’s appointment in Iceland because she was worried about the costs. However, the day before departure, she visited the emergency room. The doctor diagnosed her with a “large pleural effusion.” This occurs when fluid pools around the lungs, making breathing difficult.
“I was over gallons of liquid in my chest,” says Catty. “I was internally owned the week leading up to my diagnosis.”
In the emergency room, doctors were able to drain fluid from their chests and fly home. They also ordered a CT scan and told Cattie “I thought they had cancer.” They recommended that lymph node biopsy and PET scans be performed for a definitive diagnosis.
A few days after she returned home, her breasts were filled with liquid again, making breathing difficult again. She visited the local emergency room and the doctors acknowledged her.
“They drained me with the breast tube,” says Catty. “Two days later I had a pet scan lit up like a Christmas tree. After that I did a biopsy of my lymph nodes.”
The test led to the diagnosis of stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma and she received her first round of chemotherapy while still in the hospital. Two and a half weeks later, she returned home.
Doctors said her lymphoma affected the lymph nodes deep inside her breasts, causing them to fill with fluid.
“They were very big,” she says. “It was causing irritation in my chest cavity, so it was my body secreting more pleural effusion and continuing to re-accumulate the fluid in my chest.”
In total, Cattie receives 12 rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy every two weeks. As of early August 2025, she was in the middle of treatment.
“Every round was different,” she says. “I don’t have much appetite.”
She also experiences several nerve damage and feels “chronically dehydrated.”
She is still wearing woolering.
“A few days after treatment, I tell you that I am showing mild signs of illness, which is really interesting to me (and) because that’s when I feel the worst,” she says.
Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer derived from white blood cells, often grows in lymph nodes, says the American Cancer Society. It can affect lymph nodes in the chest, abdomen, and pelvis, but can also occur in the spleen, bone marrow, thymus, gastrointestinal tract or adenoids and tonsils.
According to Mayo Clinic, fever and sweating are two common symptoms.
The American Cancer Society says that almost 9,000 people will be diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2025. It can affect children and the elderly, but it generally occurs in younger adults. Treatments include chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation or targeted therapy.
Wearables to detect illnesses
Wearable devices such as smartwatches and rings are good for detecting heart rate and heart rate variability, but “it depends on the device” because of body temperature, Dr. Michael Snyder, director of Stanford’s Center for Genomics and Personalization Medicine, tells Today.com.
That being said, wearables can accurately detect shifts in people’s baseline metrics. “Even if the temperature is not completely accurate, you can still pick up the shifts well,” adds Snyder.
Casey Cattie harms more than half of the treatment for stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. (Courtesy Casey Catty)
Synder and his team conducted research showing that wearables know that there are respiratory viral infections, such as Covid-19, because “heart rate increases.” His research can even detect Covid-19 before symptoms begin.
Anecdotal reports also show that smartwatches and rings may notice atrial fibrillation. This is because the conditions cause irregular heartbeats.
Wearables can track your heart rate accurately, but you cannot always identify the cause of changes or increases. And there’s a lot to do, from ongoing stress to running a marathon.
“The bottom line is that something is off. That’s not always telling you what it is,” Synder says. “In many cases, you can contextualize it. …If you run a marathon and your heart rate goes up for a few days, that’s because you run a marathon.”
If your wearable tells you about abnormal changes in your body, he recommends talking to a doctor.
“If that continues, you need to check out. It’s very similar to your car’s check engine light,” he says. “If it just blinks, you’ll probably ignore it. But if it continues for a while, you’ll probably have your car checked.”
“Amazing weirdness”
As a pediatric nurse, Catty works in the hospital with her children. She is on vacation as she is worried that chemotherapy will wipe out her immune system and will get sick. Furthermore, a 12-hour shift during chemotherapy navigation seemed difficult.
She has been scanned recently and is pleased with how well the treatment is working.
“My scans were clear. That’s surprising considering I have tumors throughout my lungs, throughout my esophagus. I had them in my spleen,” she says.
As Cattie, who is also a musician, looks back on her experiences, it still seems incredible.
“When I think about everything I went through in April, I can’t believe it actually happened to me,” she says. “Being told I’m suffering from cancer alone is a type of trauma that no one wants.”
Catty hopes people will learn the importance of advocating for their health from listening to her.
Casey Catty wants to encourage people to become supporters of their health when her story seems to be something wrong (Courtesy Casey Catty)
“I went for eight months with a doctor who missed the diagnosis. A doctor with 40 years of experience specializing in lymphoma treatment and the kind of cancer I have. I trusted them,” she says.
“I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus here. Basically, if you have an intestine that feels like something is wrong, you need to trust that intestine sensation.”
This story first appeared on Today.com. More from today:
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