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The Earthlite Home Massage Kit is very adjustable, which important for face-down sleeping.
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My wife tried various things, including putting tape and eventually gauze under the spots it was digging into. Because it fits on the face, it digs into the face when said face is pressed into a U-shaped pillow for sleeping. This particular torture device was fitted to me after surgery to protect the eye from me clawing at it. I dreaded going to bed, because the surgeon instructed me to keep wearing a plastic shield at night. The picture makes it look like the pillow wasn’t quite flat, but I think I managed to adjust it so my face was parallel to the table. I had a terrible time sleeping on my face, so I got up and rearranged the Earthlite kit to it would support me over the kitchen table, so I slept there for a while. That first night after the surgery was pretty bad. I mounted it between my mattress and box spring at the foot of the bed and ended up sleeping the opposite way from usual (so I didn’t have to mess with the headboard). I ended up finding an Earthlite Home Massage Kit on (link valid as of ) that is an extremely flexible U-shaped pillow mounting system. The problems for me were: a) your head is facing down over, but not too far from, the bed, thus I think it could get hot and stuffy in that little pocket and b) if I set it up that way, my feet would be way off the end of the bed, which would be quite uncomfortable. For example, their sleeping arrangement consisted of a large wedge pillow that raises your body off the bed (so far, so good) and a U-shaped pillow mount that holds your head flat. The surgeon’s staff gave me a brochure for a company that would rent vitrecomy recovery gear by the week, but I decided to try to solve the problem myself, because I am so tall that I guessed none of the rental stuff would work for me. This post is about the night situation, so I will cover the daytime setup later. Therefore, I had to come up with equipment and settings to help me sleep at night and survive in a prone position during the day. The only exception was the 12 times a day when my wife was putting drops or ointment into my eye. After my vitrectomy surgery I had to remain face down 24 hours a day.
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