So What Am I Paying You For Again?!?

That is what I was in the middle of saying to the tech person on the phone when I realized I was wrong.

But I swear I thought I was right!  Let me explain.....

I am on a 14-day heart monitor.  If you have ever been on a monitor, you know just how irritating it can be.  The wires tangle.  The electrode patches leave huge red itchy welts on you.  Wearing a bra is out of the question due to all your hardware.  It gets even more irritating if your electrodes don't want to adhere good to your skin.  This causes the signal to be interrupted and the monitor beeps like crazy until you fix it.

Last night, my monitor woke me from a sound sleep with its crazy beeping.  The screen said that a lead was disconnected.  I checked my connections.  All good.  Still beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep......  Turn off and reset sensor.  Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep..........  Turn off sensor.  Spend some time pressing electrodes to ensure a good connection.  Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.......  I finally had to change electrodes to get it to stop.  Changing electrodes takes a good 15 minutes since you have to wait for them to adhere good to skin before you can reconnect.  So after all that, it took me a while to wind back down and go to sleep. 

Fast forward to this morning....When I woke up, I noticed a lead was dangling.  Completely disconnected!  But the monitor was not beeping!  I reconnected it and went on with my day. 

But the more I thought about it, the more ticked off I got.  Seriously, it was completely disconnected and DID NOT BEEP!  What exactly am I paying this monitoring service for?!?  It beeps when it is connected but does not beep when it is!!

So I thought I would give it a little test.  I left my monitor on but disconnected EVERY LEAD.  Just to see how long it took before it would start beeping.

10 minutes.  Nothing.  20 minutes.  Nothing.  30.  An hour.  Nothing

The longer it went without beeping, the angrier I got.  This thing is costing several thousand dollars and it really isn't monitoring!!

After 2 hours of disconnected leads and no beeps, I called the monitoring service.  I asked the tech just what exactly did my readout say was going on with my heart because I have had this dang thing disconnected for 2 hours and it hasn't even sent out a beep so obviously it isn't monitoring anything and I am so disappointed with this service.......

And when I finally came up for air, she replied that there was a 'significant amount' of activity with my heart last night.  So much activity that the monitor is still trying to send it all...

So yes, I shut up and apologized.