I built the device I needed.

The story

At sixteen, after a long day of summer football workouts, I had my first stress-induced epileptic seizure, behind the wheel on the highway. My car flipped four times before it hit the median. I walked away from it.

Nine months later I was diagnosed with frontal-lobe epilepsy. Stress, I learned, is my most consistent trigger.

That’s a hard thing to live with. The warning sign I most needed to catch was the one I was worst at noticing. By the time I felt stress, it already had hold of me, and the part of me that could have done something about it was already compromised.

So I went looking for something that would catch it for me. Trackers told me I was stressed and showed me a chart afterward. Apps asked me to stop what I was doing and breathe. But stress never waited for a quiet moment. It showed up mid-conversation, in class, on the field.

Every device assumed I’d be at my most capable in the moment I was at my least.

I wanted something that would notice for me and respond on its own, before I had to think about it. Nothing did that. So I started building it.

AcuSera is now on its third prototype, and it’s my full-time work. I was recruited to play college football. I chose this instead.

I’m building AcuSera for anyone who has felt stress get ahead of them. The nurse who can’t leave the floor. The student walking into an exam. The person who just wants their day back. I know what it’s like to not be able to trust your own warning signs, and I don’t want anyone else to have to rely on noticing in time.

Zaydan Ahmed, founder of AcuSera, Overland Park, Kansas

AcuSera is a wellness device built for everyday stress. It isn’t designed to detect, predict, or prevent seizures.