As preparation for being sick, my wife wanted a new bed. She wanted one of those adjustable beds so that she could sit up and watch TV. We went shopping and tried out a number of them and settled on one. The goal was to get it delivered and setup before chemotherapy started.

I have a lot to say about these things after seeing them and using them for a couple nights now. I haven’t fully decided yet whether to cover the whole ins and outs of the adjustable bed. Maybe I will split the difference and talk about some of them.

First of all, they are expensive. I would say 5-10 times what a normal mattress would cost. If you are single, then any size bed could/would work. Queen size beds are single function, meaning the bed actuates as one unit. If you each want separate settings, you are going to have to get a king sized bed.

I am a morning person and not a big TV watcher. I do read in bed a lot of nights and go to sleep when I finish my chapter while my wife continues to watch TV. Consequently, we moved from a queen to a king. That meant that we had to also purchase another bed. Well, anything we could get quickly, was inexpensive and required self assembly.

This bed frame was flimsy. Each rail came in two pieces and the whole thing is engineered as a system. After the main assembly, I decided to put the slats in just for lateral stability. Fortunately, the adjustable beds have their own frames and sit inside of a traditional bed. But it also means that the box spring does not provide any rigidity. Of course, when the deliverers/installers came they said that the slats would not work. I questioned them and they reiterated that it would not work. They sat in the truck while I removed the slats.

I gave them their space. When they were done, we wanted to check out the new bed of course. I started looking at the situation and there was plenty of room to put the slats in. So, I put them back in.

I suspected that there was enough room and that they just did not want them in their way. That being said, their approach was not honest. And this is the point, a lot of people would have struggled to assemble the bed in the first place. After the fact they wouldn’t have checked to see if what was told was the truth. In this case, no big deal other than the sense of trust being slightly violated.

In the bigger picture, I think about places like oil changes and unsuspecting rubes getting told, ‘you need this’. While that is probably the lesser of two evils like changing fluids before they are due. What is probably worse is not doing something that is needed just because the ‘expert’ doesn’t want to do it.

Not every time I want to spend the energy to check and, I am not an expert in everything. The best advice I would give is go with your gut. Sometimes, you get a diagnosis that doesn’t make sense and it is not true and sometimes it is. This is why the colloquial advice is get a second opinion. Of course, I am not going to get a second opinion on setting up an adjustable bed nor am I going to drive my car to another oil change spot. But, if it doesn’t seem right or feel right, it probably is worth investigating.

End Your Programming Routine: Given that I have only slept on the bed a few nights at this point, I am going to reserve judgement. We also had to re-adjust the height and take the bed completely apart after the setup was complete because we determined the initial height was too high. Even if you don’t know the truth, use your senses and make your own assessment.