So the husband escaped his medical crisis with his health more or less intact again, but it just might cost him his bed.

I’ve always had trouble sleeping alone. His snoring’s not only white noise, but it’s kind of a mental woobie—if he’s snoring, all must be well with our world. For the first twelve or thirteen years of our marriage, I think I slept alone for maybe seven or eight days total—including childbirth. When he got back into snowmobiling and started going north, he was gone overnight more frequently. (Reading, Playstation and fast food are the favored cold-weather activities for the boys and I.) While I was getting better, it was still hard sleeping without him and, more often than not, I’d crash on the couch with the TV on.

Enter one extremely blocked carotid artery.

The first two nights after they admitted him, I slept on the couch. I needed the TV to distract my subconscious, plus the dog spent so much time in her crate those first two crazy days I couldn’t bear to make her spend the night in it so she cuddled with me. Then my mom came and I had to sleep alone in the big, empty, cold bed. (She’s allergic to cats, so the leather and hardwood in the living room is better for her than the carpet and bedding in my bedroom, which is also where the cats spend 80% of their lives.)

Two weeks later, I’m still sleeping alone in the big bed. At first he had to keep his head elevated and was sleeping in his chair. Between the elevated hospital bed and the chair, his back muscles seem to have forgotten how to lie (or lay) flat. The past couple of nights he’s managed to stretch out on the couch, which is progress.

But, dayum, I’ve gotten used to sleeping diagonally in the middle of the bed. And he can’t reach the ceiling fan control from downstairs. He likes the room temperature to be comfortable. I like the room temperature to be just chilly enough to enable comforter snuggling. And I don’t have his elbow jabbing my spine. And his snoring is slightly louder than you could call white noise. And I can get into bed on his side, where the light switch is, so I don’t have to navigate around the bed and my toe-breaking hope chest in the dark.

I try to look appropriately mournful as I kiss him goodnight before making the solo trek upstairs, but I’m starting to think if I put the boys in bunkbeds in one room, we could have separate bedrooms. He could take the short kid’s.

No ceiling fan. :groucho: