Don’t Leave Home Without It

If you’re over 40, you will likely remember a series of commercials featuring various semi-famous actors and celebrities telling you about the need to carry the American Express card, and the famous catchphrase “Don’t Leave Home Without It!”

If you are of roughly that same generation or older you may have strong opinions on medical identification jewelry, equating it with the elderly. But the story here is about modern medical ID jewelry, not about Karl Malden or about what your grandmother wore. It’s about how we got from a family-operated California non-profit to an estimated $1 billion industry in 70 years. It’s about how thanks to advances in both technology and taste, we have moved into an era where fashion meets function, especially when it comes to smartphones and wearable technology.

But you have to be wearing it first.

Did you know August is National MedicAlert Awareness Month, and this year is specifically the 30th anniversary of it being named so? Did you also know 2026 marks the 70th anniversary of the non-profit MedicAlert being established?

The creation of the first piece of medical identification jewelry stretches back a few years earlier to 1953 when the daughter of Dr. Marion Collins had an allergic reaction to a tetanus shot. That incident led the doctor to the idea of having a way to relay medical information quickly. His solution proved popular, and according to the MedicAlert Foundation, has saved more than 4 million lives.

In the bleeding disorders community, you will find varying opinions on wearing jewelry that point out our condition. I will even admit I hated wearing one because of how they looked when I was a child and a teenager back in the 1980s and 1990s. But as I have gotten older, I see the value in it, if I can just remember to wear it when I’m supposed to.

This is now a personal story about thinking I would be okay for just one afternoon but learning the hard way that was not the case. On June 15 I had arrived home from the Texas Bleeding Disorders Conference and thought “I don’t need to wear my bracelet today, I’m not leaving town.” Now I live in a town of about 2,500 people, and most of those people know me, which is a fact that will soon come in useful.

My bracelet, made by the company MyID and one I received through a program offered by one of the drug companies, has been with me for a few years now. I even lost it at one point in 2025 and a stranger who found it in their car called me using the QR code on the inside to get it back to me. I should have been wearing it that day in mid-June, but thought I would be okay. And I was until I passed out in the middle of a restaurant during lunch.

Again, thankfully it’s a small town and the people know me and know I’m the guy with hemophilia (I have given more than a few talks to groups about it) so they knew they were supposed to do *something*, but unfortunately my bracelet would have told them what to do immediately. Even the EMTs knew they needed to be careful running an IV. I could hear them discussing that fact, and I’m grateful they remembered, but being unable to communicate left me helpless to try and guide them in finding a vein they could access easily, leaving my arms bruised for weeks.

Once I regained my ability to communicate in the hospital, I immediately had to start apologizing for not having my bracelet on. I have been lectured by my family, the majority of the Texas bleeding disorders community, most of my doctors and nurses and of course the owner of the restaurant because I ruined his lunch rush that day.

On a serious note. If you do not have any kind of medical identification, check with your drug company or home health care company to see what, if anything, they may have available for you. You can also check with your Hemophilia Treatment Center or member organization to see if they may have a program to get one for you. You never know when it could save your life.

Ryan Crowe is the Communications Specialist for HFA. His wife has not let him leave the house without his medical ID bracelet on his wrist since the incident in June.