Good Things Come in Small Packages (It’s 10pm Do You Know Where Your Dexcom Transmitter Is?)

I’ve devoted a fair amount of pixels extolling the virtues of my Dexcom Seven Plus CGMS, but our time together has not always been a cakewalk. There is one episode in particular that I will be hard pressed to ever get out of my mind.

To me, possibly the most impressive part of the Dexcom system is the transmitter. Pictured here, you can see how small it is.

Image taken from Dexcom's website.

What’s amazing about this little gizmo, that barely weighs anything, is that, without any visible power source or antenna or what have you, it constantly sends a signal from your body to the Dexcom receiver.  All the time.  For at least a year.  From something that, in terms of size, weight, and plainly visible technology, is only a step or two above a checker or a guitar pick.  Oh, and as I’ve written before, it has no trouble getting wet.   Anyway, lest its unassuming appearance fool you, I offer this cautionary tale:

As mentioned in a previous post, I had a Dexcom sensor fail shortly before Thanksgiving dinner.  Obviously not wanting to pull myself away from the festivities, or attempt to calibrate a new sensor in the midst of one of my greatest annual displays of gluttony, I simply pulled out sensor and transmitter and…I…well…I did something with them, though what would not become clear for some time to come (all that food I eat on Thanksgiving?  yeah, i wash it all down with wine).

My wife and I spend Thanksgiving in Maryland with my family, and then usually head up to New York City shortly thereafter to celebrate her birthday with her family.  When we got to New York the following day, I decided it was time to put in a new sensor.  So I got out all of my Dexcom supplies, a newly-recharged receiver, a fresh sensor, and….no transmitter.  Uh oh.

I thought back to what I’d done with it, and all I could remember was throwing the failed sensor in the trash compactor. Could it be that I didn’t remember to take out the transmitter first???  I had only had the system for several weeks at that point, and I was not at my most…focused.  Anything was possible.

I called the house in Maryland and asked my father to please not take out the trash, that I would need to go through it when I got back from New York.  In 6 days.  Fortunately, the trash sits in a bin outside, and it was very cold, which kept odor risks to a minimum.  Also, my parents compost, so there is usually a minimum of organic waste in the trash.  That said, one of our most beloved (until now!) Thanksgiving traditions is eating raw oysters in the morning.  At least 100 of them.  And oyster shells don’t always get picked completely clean.  And they don’t compost.

Now my father, being the guy that he is, didn’t just keep the trash from going out, he dug in.  He called me an hour so later and said he’d poked around and didn’t find anything.  I felt bad (although I hadn’t asked him to go that extra step.  And he did work for a trash company for many years, though not in any capacity that involved handling trash) and told him I’d give it a more thorough inspection when I got back.  In 6 days.  In the meantime, I called Dexcom and told them that I may need a replacement transmitter.  They offered to replace it at a discount, since I was a new user, but a discounted transmitter is still a few hundred dollars.  I summoned my resolve to do a complete and total trash audit when I returned to MD.

Jump ahead 6 days.

I got home and surveyed the task.  Two barrels, full of trash (much of it compacted), much of it from over a week earlier.  At Thanksgiving.  With lots and lots of oysters.

Cue the rubber gloves.

I worked for about an hour, carefully de-compacting and sifting through every scrap.  It turned out not every piece of organic matter (turkey scraps, for instance) went into the compost.  It was an altogether horrid experience, nose-cringing even in the freezing cold air.  Apparently two barrels of compacted trash become far more when returned to original size.  As predicted, the oysters were no picnic, to put it mildly.

When it was all said and done, I did not have a transmitter.  I did, however, have a much greater appreciation for why stalkers go through people’s garbage.  There’s a lot to be learned.  I, for example, learned that my aunt (who comes for Thanksgiving every year) goes through far more Nicorette in a 3-day period than I ever would have imagined possible.

Defeated (and disgusted) I went back inside for one more look around.  I went up to my room, and, in a desperate hail-Mary effort, went back through the pockets of everything I had been wearing on Thanksgiving.  And there, buttoned safely in the rear pocket of my pants, was a little white plastic miracle.

The lessons I am took from this experience are two:  1.  small things can hold great power, and 2. ALWAYS check your pockets before you check the trash.