I just made my second most expensive (in dollars-per-volume or dollars per mass) purchase I've ever made. It's this little piece of plastic you're looking at. Next time you're on "The Price is Right" and you're looking at this thing, don't guess 25 cents. You're not going to find it in a gum-ball machine. Guess closer to $1000.Very fortunately, the insurance company paid for most of it.
It's the main functional part of what is called a Continuous Glucose Monitoring System. Not pictured is the sensor itself that actually goes under the skin to read glucose levels. While the sensor still has an outrageous price, it's not nearly as bad as this 24 carat plastic.
For the curious, it works like this: The sensor goes under the skin into subcutaneous tissue, and this plastic doohickey reads the glucose level and sends it via radio frequency to my insulin pump. My insulin pump can then alarm at me if the levels go too high or too low so I can do something about it.
It costs $1000 for this 5.4 gram thing. Taking that cost to weight ratio and applying it to a the lightest weight 2010 Honda Civic you can buy (3204 pounds, empty gas tank I'm sure), your price tag would be $269,131,472.22. Yes, quarter of a billion dollars.
Fortunately I don't need to buy a car's weight in these things. Just one.
10 comments:
From my perspective, saving your life is definitely worth $538,262,944.44 let alone a measly $2,000. Although we haven't tried using it yet, so you still make me nervous.
Hooray for plastic. Of course, a credit card could also be that valuable, if it were lost.
I'll give you some awesome advice: If you want to keep it in good shape, never beat it with a hammer, or place it on a hot stove.
Geez Chad! How long did you have to go to school to become that wise?? :)
As far as the expensive plastic goes, HIP HIP HOORAY THAT YOU FINALLY GOT IT!! And WHY are you not using it yet?
Sounds like it hurts if it goes under your skin. Ouch! But absolutely worth it, I'm sure.
Katie, thanks. You're my favorite wife in the whole world!
Chad, you bring up a good point, although I've also purchased software, which has neither weight, nor mass, and therefore, since I'd be dividing by zero, any cost for software automatically trumps this cost to mass ratio infinitely.
Mom, I'm not using it yet because I haven't been trained on it, and while I'm 98% sure I could set it up right and get all the info I need out of the manuals, it's a bit too pricey to risk it.
Erica, yes, I'm sure it does hurt putting it in. But that's really nothing new. I've been doing finger blood sugar checks and/or insulin shots / insulin pump infusion sets ever since I was 14 years old daily. It's not a big deal. AKA: I'm tough.
Who'da thought? I'm very happy that you have it now. May you live long and prosper.
Advice: Don't lose it. I hope it does what it's billed to do.
..oh...and I'm sure glad Katie is done administering that test.
I'm GLAD you have it. Its about time. Absolutely worth the money.
As it turns out, I lied to you all. The thing is $1000 instead of $2000. And even though it's a difference of a thousand bucks which makes it half of what I originally told you, I somehow don't feel like it changes my point at all -- however, I still updated the post with the correct numbers, just because.
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