My doctor prescribed a Life Watch heart monitor, with a cell-phone transmitter. I started into a cardiac event at 8 p.m. and hit the manual switch to send an alarm to Life Watch. AT MIDNIGHT, someone called me to ask if I was OK.

The battery on the cell-phone transmitter only lasts for 5 hours, so that means the transmitter goes dead in the middle of the night, and it takes hours to recharge. That means I have no alarm-transmission service from, say, 3 a.m. until about noon the next day, even if I put it on charge at 7 a.m. when I wake up.

Furthermore, the customer service people are idiots. I had to tell the woman repeatedly that the phone had been on charge for three hours and was still dead...in fact, I was so frustrated after about the fourth time that I ended up screaming one word at a time to her in an attempt to get what I was saying through her thick skull.

The thing is going back today after having it just ONE day.