You must have a newer model - mine was bigger than a beeper, and at a few points during my time with it my kids were climbing all over me trying to press the button! And yeah - I put electrical tape over the screen after a few days, so I couldn't see the heart rate.
I will say this about phoning in the transmission - I also thought it was great that I could call in and talk to a nurse before and after I sent in the recordings, and after a week or so I figured out how to ask questions so that I could get them to tell me what they were seeing (I don't think they're supposed to do that).
But that was a double-edged sword, because on one occasion, when I asked, the nurse said she saw some
v-tach in the transmission. My heart sank and I was worried sick for a couple days.
But I found out later that what happens is the computer on the other end is trying to decipher the data it's receiving and is forced to categorize every rhythm it sees. But with only two leads, there can be lots of "artifacts" in the data that make it impossible for a computer to read - so it spit out
v-tach in my case, and the nurse just repeated what she saw on the screen.
My cardiologist reviewed that strip along with every other, and when I asked about that one in particular, she told me about the computer and the artifacts, and that a human eye needs to make the final determination on these, and she was sure it was
PAT or
PSVT, not
NSVT.
So while having that access can be a real lifeline, remember that those people receiving the data are not cardiologists, and to take their input with a grain of salt.