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Most of you are probably aware on some level that I’ve had a complaint of back problems for many years. A fusion/discectomy at L4/L5 in 2004 helped a lot, but not 100%. Over the intervening years, my back began again to degrade significantly. Below is an MRI image of my lower spine, taken a little over 3 years ago. We tried a number of mattresses over the years, including a memory foam mattress that didn’t hold up as long as it was supposed to. The next mattress purchase was a split California King Sleep Number bed with one of their higher end mattress sets, and the ability to raise/lower the head and foot of the bed independently for each mattress. It was reasonably comfortable at first, but over time it too began to break down, lose its shape a bit, and resulted in increasing levels of back pain. Then in about 2016 or so, we bought a split California King TempurPedic with the same mechanical traits as the Sleep Number bed. 7 years later, this bed is as comfortable and sound as it was the day we bought it.

The downside, such as it is, is that we bought their "tier one" (for lack of a better term) mattress set, so the whole thing was hugely expensive. If I recall correctly, the MSRP on the whole shebang was something over $12,000, and we got it on a clearance sale for around $8,800 … huge savings, but STILL a whole lot of simoleans. This did not include head and footboards, which we already had.

If money is not an object, I would find a way to pay for this specific TempurPedic bed…a split king, top tier mattress set, with the mechanical ability to raise/lower the head and foot of the bed. I sleep like a baby now, and on days where my back acts up and is more aggravated than normal, I can adjust the bed to find a position that lets me sleep with uninterrupted comfort. And even if discomfort intrudes during the night, I can reach over to my night stand, grab the remote control (I know it by feel now) and make adjustments on the fly to correct the problem.

Oh, and although I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used this feature since 2016, but the bed also includes a vibrating massage function, which can be operated from the bedside remote control.


FYI, this image doesn’t show my T-spine, which is in almost as bad a shape as my L-spine.