Glad to hear you finally got help and hope she's doing OK now.
It's true with all such services, many even tell you in the manual that IF you have cell service and if someone is able to use a GPS enabled smart phone and can call 911 directly that your better to do that First. The SOS button is designed more for when your in areas where there either is no cell service, no one had a cell phone, or there has been a crash and the occupants are somehow trapped.
We had to use ours last may just shortly after getting our 2021 Longhorn (fortunately we'd never had to use it in our 2018) and it was one of those situations where services like this really shine compared to the old days;
Last May we cam across a single car accident in the middle of the Nevada desert at 2am and had to use our SOS button because there was no cell service, the next town of any size was almost 90 mins away even at highway speed (85 in that area), and at that time of night you could potentially sometimes sit for over an hour without seeing another car come by which is what happened to the trapped people in the car.
In a long desert valley with mountains at each end an older couple and he was pinned and she (smartly) didn't start walking up the highway but decided to stay with him and hope a vehicle passed. They had their hazard flashers on and she said she seen our LED headlights coming for miles across the desert valley and was surprised how long it took between the time she first seen our lights top the crest at the far end of the valley and actually reach where they was near the other end on the down-slope knowing the speed limit was 85, she said it took almost 15 minutes to reach them from when she first seen our lights and I told her it's like 25 miles across that valley if they seen us coming over the far slope. In addition to their hazard lights when we came up on them she practically stepped in the road waving a coat. They said we'd been the first car to pass by since they went in the ditch almost 45 minutes before when he swerved to miss some kind of small animal and lost control.
It would have been nice if their vehicle had such a system but with nothing but cell phones all they could do was wait and hope for help. Lucky for them we not only came along but my lady is a LPNi, one of the best battlefield trauma and triage nurses I ever known serving over 17 years on both helicopters and transport planes out of the war zones back to Europe, and now has worked for Life-flight for another 10+ years. It was spring but the desert was still cold at that time of night and there car wasn't running so they had no heat, both was cold, and he was near shock but Kiri was able to take care of him with supplies from our truck (which is always well stocked as you can imagine, she keeps a medical go-back in it at all times) until the local services finally arrived. While waiting and she was in the passenger seat keeping an eye on him I actually managed to get his door open and unbolt his seat with my hand tools, so we had helped him out just minutes before the local rescue arrived which saved at least some time.
In our case the girl who responded to the SOS button that we got was efficient and proficient and had help on the way very quickly. Due to the distance it took the local responders awhile to get there but that was the distance and clearly not her fault. I think the biggest confusion she had was she wasn't certain WHICH place to try and contact. She tried the NV State Police first only to have them transfer her not once, not twice, but at total FIVE times finally ending in getting hung up on. We was so far from anywhere the XM lady said that the town that shows to be our address doesn't seem to have any kind of contact number she can find in the emergency systems so she said she got someone else helping her and they had had to "work their way out" in each direction with one working north and the other working south going town by town until they reached someone. At one point she assured me they was working as fast as they could and that "this is crazy, towns on the map but when they call the provided emergency services number for the town, no one answers the phone". They finally got someone to answer in a town almost 60 miles north of us. Now the XM lady seemed to be frustrated by the no answers at the numbers for many of these desert towns (many just tiny dots on the map when you see them in person) but in reality I felt she was working efficiently under the circumstances she was given and having to make multiple calls and wait to decide there wasn't going to be an answer. From the time we hit the button to the time she finally found someone to answer the phone was in reality only about 10 minutes which I felt was good on her part considering even the state police transferred her 5 times only to then hang up on her during a 6th transfer.
So the system has it's place but if you have good cell service, a GPS smart phone, and someone is able then calling 9-1-1 directly is almost always going to be the most direct route to help.
I very sincerely hope that your poor wife is making a full and speedy recovery, or very soon will be.
