Kittys And Sleeping After OHS

One of the challenges after you return home following OHS is how to get good sleep. The problem is that the incision makes it difficult to get in and out of bed, and sleeping positions can be painful. One idea that is used by a lot of people is sleeping in a recliner. Apparently, this makes sleeping and, in particular, getting up a lot easier. Of course, you have to have a recliner, which I don't have.

Here's a cute story about cats and sleeping post-op in a recliner or in bed from one of the VR.com members:

While I used the recliner a lot during the day, I couldn't sleep in it due to being visited by cats (some rather more than 10 lbs.), I slept mostly in bed. Back sleeping resulted in snoring loud enough to wake me up, so Laura used various wedges of blankets, towels, and pillows to position me for comfort--about halfway between back and side. On cold nights she would also microwave a buckwheat pillow for me, and I would use it as necessary for warmth (heat lasted for hours).Strangely, it was a heart-related incident that forced me to use a recliner. Back up in Anchorage in 1996, shortly after I noticed a rather abundant number of PVCs during our very stressful move and drive to Anchorage from Idaho, I wore a Holter monitor for 24 hours to record my heart action awake and asleep. I couldn't lay down in bed, since the device was too cumbersome, so I wore a bathrobe, placed the main monitor into one of its pockets, covered up in my Lazy Boy recliner, and managed to get a reasonably good night's sleep. There were cats then, too, but I could take a nighttime 'visitor' or two--just shoved him or her off when too warm or heavy. Amazingly enough, three of the six cats we had then are still alive, including one that's now 18--and she's in great health. Of course after the OHS, circumstances wouldn't allow me to free myself of heavy cats, so I couldn't take the risk. Anyway, Laura made the bed nice and comfortable, and it made her feel a lot better to be beside me in bed--and me, too.

Chris