Who Gets the Bed?

Now that the cold and flu season is upon us in North America, and we’ve had the big H1N1 scare about how bad this is going to be if we don’t get our shots, there’s still one important unanswered question.

If one person in a couple gets sick, who has to leave the bedroom? The sick guy, or the healthy guy?

There’s an argument to be made for each side. The sick person needs a bit of pampering. They should be able to wallow in their own bed with their regular blankets and pillows, not to mention the ambient noise and conditions that are normal to them. This, presumably, would promote more rest and help them get healthy faster, not to mention the fact that the best television is probably in that bedroom, maybe even with an extra cable box, so there’s more to occupy their time while convalescing.

On the other hand, the sick person is probably going to stay in bed all the next day. There’s not a thing in the world to stop them from hauling themselves out of the sick room and back to their bedroom (for access to the good TV and their own bed) or down to the living room (for a change of scenery). The healthy person has to get up and go to work and needs to be rested for the next day, plus they shouldn’t be subjected to the potential for contamination from the “sickee”.

If you’re the one who’s put out of your normal bed there’s no doubt that it interrupts your sleep. The house sounds very different from another room, especially if that’s on another floor. Ordinary creaks and noises can leave you convinced that there are either burglars or ghosts, or both, that are trying to force in and take over the place.

A fever doesn’t help this perception, either.

In our house, those sensations are compounded by the fact that we have lots of lamps on timers in almost every room, so if you forget to turn one off it will suddenly come on with a “clunk”, startling you out of whatever doze you’ve managed to embrace and emitting a dim glow from the next room.

I have been sleeping on the couch in the den for the last couple of nights. Not, fortunately, because of any transgression that’s resulted in my exile, but because that slight tickle in my throat that I noticed on Saturday has grown into a full blown cold.

These things are never convenient, but normally I would have just gone to the guest room to sleep. Unfortunately, before I realized what had happened we’d had the kids in to help and had emptied three rooms of furniture in anticipation of the last bit of remodeling in the house.

Unfortunately, that means that all the stuff from those rooms is shoved into the guest room, making the bed inaccessible. The couch in the den was the next best option.

Fortunately, there’s a nice television with 500 channels available.