Last night I proactively set up in bed with the heated beanbag wrapped around the base of my neck acting as a kind of warm brace. And it worked! My neck was not sore at all the entire night. Did my sleep score improve? Yes! Was it good? No!
It was 57/100, which still counts as Poor (Fair starts at 60), but only two stats were poor and Deep sleep was actually rated Excellent.
The downsides of this sleep technique:
- It still took me multiple hours to fall asleep. This is even weirder when you consider how much less sleep I’ve gotten over the past week. I should be feeling more tired than I am and, barring pain, should conk out quicker. But whenever I normally go to sleep, I always start on my right side, which currently is not workable without issues, so maybe the on-back position is just not conducive to me nodding off.
- With the pseudo-neck brace in place, I really don’t move during bedtime. By the time my alarm went off this morning, just breathing in and out was uncomfortable due to stuff accumulating in my lungs and not getting shifted around by my usual night twitchings and shiftings. This can be fixed by coughing just enough to bring me wide awake.
I’m going to try without the beanbag tonight and see if the neck reacts poorly. If it does, I’ll pop in the ol’ bag right away and deal with it [insert meme here]. But being able to sleep in a normal(ish) position without pain or aids or whatever, would be dandy.
The other item of note today was my lower back getting sore. You may recall I have not had surgery on my lower back. I think it’s just because today I was moving, bending and stretching more like I normally would and my lower back was all, “Whoa, let’s not get crazy here, 10 days is not four weeks!” So I’ve spent the evening lifting nothing heavier than a glass of water.
Rooting through my cat GIFs, I find this one speaks to me tonight.
