Hannah Lucas created it because she wished she had a way to let people know she needed help.
In this op-ed, Hannah Lucas explains what led her and her brother to create notOK, an app that acts as a panic button for people experiencing mental or physical illness.
Today was a good day, but it almost didn't happen.
I can’t quite shake the night from my head, no matter how hard I try. I remember everything: from what I had on to how my house still smelled like garlic and rosemary from dinner. I especially remember how I didn’t want to die, I just wanted the pain to stop.
I actually really wanted to live, but I still tried to die. It doesn’t make any damn sense, I know, but nothing at that time made sense to me.
When I walked through the doors of my high school last year for my freshman year, I had tons of friends, my homecoming dress already picked out, a schedule loaded with honors and AP classes because I was going to be a cardiothoracic surgeon, and the High School Musical theme song playing in my head. High school was going to be amazing. Or, it was supposed to be amazing.
My fainting started the second week of school. I’d been battling migraines and dizziness for a few years prior, but didn’t think anything of it when one started during my Latin class. I stood to ask my teacher for permission to use the restroom so I could splash my face with water and everything went black before my legs gave out. When I woke, I was in a wheelchair being taken to the school nurse’s office.
My fainting became routine — so routine I ended up with my own emergency code at school: Code HL. The friends I thought I had accused me of faking it all for attention and stopped talking to me. My grades plummeted faster than I could crumple helplessly to the floor. My parents began arguing with eachother more, usually about me. Eventually, I became so weak all I could do was sleep all day. Sleep and cry.
After tons of doctor visits, emergency room trips, and internet research, I was eventually diagnosed with a dysautonomic condition called POTS —Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. Having a name for my invisible illness didn’t magically make everything normal again. I was still “that girl” at school. My grades still sucked. Some of those “friends” still weren’t speaking to me, and I still received threats from boys who warned me of what they’d do to me if they ever found me unconscious.
While everyone was busy dealing with my physical problems, I was busy battling depression. I didn’t want to do anything but sleep and eventually started self-harming. Then I attempted suicide.
That button didn’t exist then, but now it does. I told Charlie, my little brother, about my idea to make a panic button — something people could use to alert their friends and family things aren't okay. That's where our app, notOK, came from.
Charlie and I worked for months on my idea — him wireframing a prototype and me researching everything I could about mental health and business— until our parents took us seriously and gave us the green light to make it what is it today. Once downloaded, notOK App interacts with your address book, so you can add your top five contacts. Those contacts can be friends, family, a recovery sponsor, or a therapist. Because of the GPS location feature, we recommend those contacts be local people who can physically check up on you if the need arises.
Once this text message is received, your trusted contacts can indicate whether or not they’re able to physically assist you on a webpage that also gives them driving directions to get to you. notOK App is a simple tool for anyone who is “not okay,” whether they suffer mentally, emotionally, physically, or medically. I’ve received DMs and emails from all sorts of people of all ages who’ve used notOK App to help them through depression, add a layer of safety for type-one diabetics, hemophiliacs, fellow POTSies, and people in recovery from substance use disorder.
notOK app is now available in the Apple Store and Google Play Stores as a free download, with a $1.99 monthly subscription, and it's been downloaded thousands of times. It goes to show that I wasn't alone in my need for help.
It’s been over a year now since the night I almost died, and today was a good day.