Hi,
I’ve been poring over your site and those of many vendors/manufacturers for the last handful of days and feel as though there’s so much mattress information in my head that it’s all somehow nullifying itself. So, I would very much appreciate some input.
On April 2nd 2011, I experienced a severe adverse reaction to a fluoroquinolone antibiotic which has left me with generalized tendinopathy, neuralgias, myaligas, muscle spasms/weakness/wasting, painful & loose joints, paradoxical and allergic reactions to a plethora of substances I had never had any problem with before and a number of other issues. As a result of this fluoroquinolone induced tendon degradation and muscle wasting, the compression fractures and degenerating discs in my cervical and thoracic spine, which were sustained in a car wreck in '03, have been drastically reaggravated. The most consistently problematic areas are my neck, mid-back, hips & butt, ankles and heels. As a result of these and other disabling side effects, I’ve spent the majority of the last nearly 4 years stuck in bed and, despite having tried a litany of treatments, nothing yet has done much good to restore me.
For the last year or so I have been waking up almost nightly, if not multiple times a night, from unbelievable, burning hip pain. My current mattress is a soft, 7 year old, Tempurpedic, memory foam. Despite how soft this thing is, I generally have to place pillows under my knees and calves to keep my heels from touching the bed because the pressure pain there, where I have the worst of the nerve pain, is just awful. I generally fall asleep on my back and wind up on my sides. However, the pressure pain from lying on my hips is guaranteed to wake me up within 20 minutes to 3 hours. The right hip is worse than the left and I, also, tend to wake up from the hip pain when just sleeping on my back. This mattress, also, causes me back achiness in that it feels as though my vertebrae fall out of alignment while lying on it for several hours a time and I have to sort of restack them when I get up. At the risk of making myself sound like a mutant, I am 5’3", 98-111 lbs, with an extremely long torso, wide rib cage, very, very short legs and slim hips that are several inches more narrow than my shoulders.
For the last 3 nights, I’ve been sleeping on a very firm, two hundred buck, autopump air mattress. No back issues at all. Still waking up from hip pain if I lie on my side, but it’s less severe and lying on my back does not generate it. However, this mattress is firm far beyond my comfort level and, with mixed results, I’ve been lying atop atop a series of pillows to make it more comfortable.
Given the state of my health, my earning potential appears rather dire so I’d like anything I purchase to be of high quality and durability. I was considering some of the more advanced air mattresses because of their benefits to those with pain, but their tendency to break and leak is a big turn off. If I’ve overlooked a more reliable air bed, please, point it out to me. So, my experience with memory foam being soured, I’m interested in latex, specifically organic dunlop, for the durability and lack of allergy risk. Have people experienced allergic reactions to talalay, blended or otherwise?
What’s most puzzling to me is how I can choose a bed that will be soft enough to allow my neuropathic heels to touch it, soft enough that I can sleep on my side without awaking from burning hips, but hard enough to keep my spine from kinking. Is it correct that this hip pain is most likely caused by both a mattress being too firm in that area and the significant size difference between my shoulders and hips? Would a mattress that is then softer in the shoulder area than the hip area potentially solve this? But in that case, for back sleeping, wouldn’t my upper back and possibly neck, be thrown out of alignment from the lack of support while my hips are elevated on a slightly firmer material?
What’s the main difference between the shops that sell 6 inch pours vs. stacks of 2, 3, and 4 inches; is it just a cost benefit to the vendor to sell slimmer pieces? Are the 6 inchers more durable? Do the stacked mattresses really not slide around and misalign? Is a 6 inch medium dunlop core going to be too firm for me even with layers of soft dunlop and soft talalay above it?
Slatted support sounds like the way to go, but it also sounds like it would introduce a number of additional “comfort” variables that might be hard to sort out as well as potential durability problems that might go unrecognized with any broken slats hidden under the mattress or even inside a fabric casing. Additionally, I’m looking to buy a larger bed than my current one so will need a new frame and most of the ones I’ve liked are designed to hold a mattress without a support box. Can 2 inch slats be reliably inserted into a pre-made frame? Is going with a solid wood support a very bad idea for a latex mattress?
And on and on, this is what the inside of my head has sounded like since Thursday. So, any input, advice and clarifications you can offer me, will be greatly appreciated.
I am in Cincinnati and am aware of one shop, only about 20 minutes away, that sells Englanders, supposedly the Nature’s Finest line. Like many, I’m not thrilled by the idea of ordering a bed online without a prior test rest, but there doesn’t really seem to be any way around that, for the most part. The more comparable mattresses I can try out in person, the better, though my ability to drive moderate and long distances is limited by the shape I’m in on any given day and it doesn’t seem as though there are too many showroom options in my vicinity.
Thank you for all the information presented on this site.