12:55 A.M. I wake up from a deep sleep to the sound of my CGM going off: My blood sugar had just gone above my high threshold. I silence the alert and reach for my PDM so I can give myself a small correction bolus. But it’s not in its usual spot on my nightstand.

12:56 A.M. I tumble out of bed and wander into the living room. Surely, I left my PDM somewhere out here. I dig through my backpack, check the coffee table, and look for it on the counter tops in the kitchen. I can’t find it in any of those locations.

12:57 – 1:00 A.M. I’m searching all over the apartment, like a mad woman now. I’m checking in between couch cushions, inside cabinets, and underneath furniture at a lightning-fast pace. My heart is beating rapidly as I wonder where the actual eff my PDM could be. I shake my sleep and bemused partner awake, fill him in on the situation, and enlist his help in the search. He only has a vague idea of what the PDM looks like (I have too many devices for him to be able to distinguish the difference between them) and isn’t much help, but he does offer a tip: Check the car.

1:00 – 1:03 A.M. I run down four flights of stairs and into the parking garage where my boyfriend’s car is parked. Maybe it fell out of my backpack on our way to trivia at a restaurant earlier that evening? I rifled through the passenger seat, checking underneath it and even in the backseat, but no luck.

1:04 – 1:07 A.M. I practically break out in a cold, panicked sweat as I contemplate the possibility that I took my PDM out at the restaurant and it’s still there. I knew for a fact that I hadn’t used my PDM for anything since I’d eaten dinner hours before at the apartment, but it was worth calling the restaurant to see if they’d found anything. I called, knowing the odds of anyone answering at this hour were slim…only to be proven wrong! I was relieved when a man picked up, and I hastily explained to him the situation. I provided a description of my PDM and waited with bated breath while he searched the area in which my team had sat to play trivia.

1:08 – 1:11 A.M. Crushing disappointment crashes over me like stormy ocean waves as the man tells me, after a prolonged search, that he couldn’t find my PDM. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Numbly, I recited my contact information over the phone, thanked him for his time, and hung up. I was beyond panicked now. My boyfriend was asking me about a contingency plan and all I wanted to do was scream at him, my OmniPod IS my contingency plan!!!!!!!! I start formulating a plan to drive to the restaurant first thing in the morning to search the premises myself, as well as call Insulet and beg them to overnight a new PDM. Maybe I would just have to stick to manual injections the entire next day, though I had no idea what I’d do about long-acting insulin since the Lantus sitting in the fridge expired months ago.

1:12 – 1:14 A.M. My mind was in overdrive and I refused to give up right then and there. I was absolutely certain that I hadn’t taken my PDM out since my dinnertime bolus. But since I did go out that night, there were really only one of three places it could be: the apartment, the car, or the restaurant. It definitely wasn’t in the apartment, which I’d searched so thoroughly that it looked like a tornado had whipped through it, but it was worth searching the car one more time…just to be positive.

1:15 A.M. I make my way back down to the parking garage. I turn my cell phone’s flashlight feature on and scan the seats carefully, peeking under and over and around every possible surface…I didn’t see a damn thing. Defeated, I turned to close the passenger side door when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a gray object wedged between the door would be when it was slammed shut and the seat. It was practically camouflaged, that’s how well it blended with its surroundings. It was…MY PDM!!!

“Relieved” doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. “Elated”, “victorious”, and “exhausted” are all better descriptors. I ran back up to the apartment, told my boyfriend, and breathed a deep sigh, glad that the entire episode had a happy ending. We settled back into bed, though I lay there staring at the ceiling for a long time afterwards. If I hadn’t double checked the car, my boyfriend would’ve just driven off to work the next day, both of us oblivious to the fact that my PDM was there. I would’ve wasted time trying to track it down at the restaurant and calling Insulet, and there probably would’ve been a lot more frustration felt and tears shed.

But thank goodness it didn’t come down to that.

The end results of the missing PDM episode was 1) losing a decent night of sleep, 2) feeling an urgent need to establish a better contingency plan, and 3) feeling an even more pressing need to install a tracking device in that damn PDM, stat…because that thing is just too easy to lose.