Home › Health › Neck & Shoulder Pain
She dreaded the guest bed more than the drive. Her shoulder was the reason.
Helen has slept on her side her whole life. A few years ago the shoulder underneath started waking her up. A deep ache, then a roll to the other side, then the same ache over there. On the bad nights the arm went tingly all the way into the hand.
At home she had a way out. She would get up and sit in the living-room chair, because sitting took the weight off the joint. Nobody was watching.
The guest room
Her sister lives a long drive away. Helen loves the visit. She started dreading the bed. In someone else's house she did not want to be the person who is useless at breakfast because she spent the night moving from one sore shoulder to the other.
The guest room had a pillow she had not seen before. White. A cutout along the side, not a plain rectangle. She lay down, her shoulder settled into the opening, and she did not think about it again.
She woke once, to a truck on the street, and went back to sleep on the same side. In the morning her hand was not numb. She lifted her arm. The shoulder felt like a shoulder, not like a locked hinge. The second night did the same thing.
What was on the bed
She turned the pillow over at breakfast. Her sister said she had bought it after a year of watching Helen come out of that room holding her arm. It was a Nester DreamPillow.
The side openings are there so a side sleeper's shoulder can drop in, instead of being pinned flat under the body's weight. The raised center holds the neck up. There is a matching opening on the other side, so turning over does not start the same problem on the second shoulder. The inside is a shape-retaining memory-foam core. The cover zips off.
What she had already tried
None of these gave the shoulder a place to go.
- A flat pillow that let my head drop
- A tall pillow that jammed my shoulder underneath it
- A soft pillow that went flat within a month
- A cervical roll that shoved my neck and still left my shoulder on the mattress
- A memory-foam brick that never gave the joint a place to go
A flat pillow let her head drop, and the shoulder kept the weight all night. A tall one filled the space by jamming the joint underneath it. She had stopped believing a pillow could be the difference.
Why the shoulder was doing the pillow's job
On your side, the shoulder is wider than the head. A normal pillow is one slab. Make it thick enough for the neck, and the shoulder is trapped under it. Make it thin, and the neck hangs in the gap while the shoulder still carries the night.
The DreamPillow splits those jobs. The side zone is open for the shoulder and the arm. The raised form keeps the neck lifted. Flip it, and the other side is there. For a night on her back, she turns the pillow and sets her head in that raised center.
That was the part she had missed. She had been treating a sore shoulder in the morning, then lying on it the same way the next night.
Two weeks later
She ordered one before the drive home and slept with her shoulder in the cutout, the same way she had at her sister's. The first nights she did not trust it. She has been let down by pillows before.
By the end of the second week she had stopped the middle-of-the-night move to the chair. Reaching back for a seat belt stopped being a wince. Putting on a sweater stopped being a project. She is 64. She does not feel new. The nights are just hers again.
If the shoulder is still what wakes you
Give it a month. Sleep on it. If your shoulder does not feel the difference, send it back.
Advertorial for Nester DreamPillow. This is a story about shoulder pressure from side sleeping. It is not medical advice, and it is not a treatment for an injury, arthritis, or a torn rotator cuff. If you have a medical concern, talk with your doctor. Results vary.