The Little Neck Fan That Lives on My Nightstand Now

The first thing I bought when the night sweats got serious was a sheet set. The last thing, about eighteen months later, was a small bladeless neck fan from JISULIFE. People find that order strange when I tell them. It surprises me a little too, considering the fan is the only one of the whole lot I still reach for at two in the morning.

I am 53. I live alone in a one-story brick ranch outside Chattanooga, in the back bedroom that faces east, which means the sun shows up early whether or not I am ready for it. The central air sits at 72 because of the power bill. I own a ceiling fan and I run it. None of that stopped me waking at 2 a.m. with my hair stuck to my neck, three or four times a night, for the better part of a year.

For a while there was a spare sleep shirt folded on the nightstand. A friend saw it and asked what it was doing there. I said it was in case of a hot flash, and then I changed the subject, which tells you how much I wanted to discuss any of this out loud.

I buy one thing at a time. Partly thrift, partly stubbornness, mostly because I want to know which thing is actually doing the work and which thing just happened to be in the room. Sheets in February. A gel pillow in March. The white noise machine in April. The JISULIFE fan in June. A weighted blanket at the end of August, which sounds like a joke inside this particular story and is not one.

The fan is the one that ended up living on the nightstand. Not in a drawer, not in the basket in the guest room with the things that did not pan out. On the nightstand, beside the lamp, charging every few days off a short USB-C cord.

The first week I used it wrong. I put it on and lay back down with it still running, which is not comfortable and not what it is built for, and I woke up with it crooked against my ear. The fix was obvious once I stopped to think: sit up, use it, take it off.

I do not sleep wearing it. I sit up, put it on for ten or fifteen minutes on a middle speed, take it off, and lie back down. That is the entire routine, and it works more nights than not.

Here is what it actually is, because the word fan makes people picture a box on the floor. This one hangs around the back of your neck and rests on your collarbones, hands-free, with no blades to catch your hair. Mine sits over the neck of my sleep shirt and sends air along both sides of my neck, which is the part of me that overheats first. In June that was the difference between lying there furious and lying there comfortable.

I press the button until it lands on a middle speed. There are five, and the top two are more than I want at two in the morning. I have never once needed the highest setting inside the house. The lower ones are near silent. When I have the JISULIFE fan on while reading before lights out, I forget I am wearing it, which is the entire point of hands-free.

The battery is 4000 mAh and the listing says 4 to 16 hours depending on speed, which matches what I see. On a middle speed I get several nights of ten-minute sessions before it needs charging. In practice I plug it in every few days, next to my phone, and think nothing of it. It weighs under nine ounces, so it is not a thing you feel sitting on your shoulders.

It is also the only fan I have ever used that does not dry my eyes out. A fan pointed straight at your face all night will do that every time. Ten minutes of moving air at the base of my neck does not. I keep it on the nightstand and I wear it doing dishes in the summer, which was not the plan when I bought it and has become the second reason I like it.

What it does not do, and I want to be plain about this: it does not make the bedroom colder, it does not stop a flash from arriving, and it will not get me back to sleep on its own. Nothing I bought this year does any of that. What it does is shorten the part of the night where I am awake and annoyed, from something closer to forty minutes down to ten or fifteen. That is not nothing at two in the morning.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy the smallest, quietest thing that solves the specific problem you have at two in the morning, and to buy it one at a time so you know what worked. I would tell you the fan is not a treatment for anything and I am not going to pretend it is. My doctor and I have had that conversation already and it is hers to have with you, not mine to summarize. What I can tell you is that my nightstand has a fan on it, the spare sleep shirt lives in a drawer now, and I sleep through more nights than I did a year ago.

And I would tell you not to buy four things in one order and hope. The sheets did their part. The pillow did its part. The noise machine covers the neighbor's dog and the garbage truck, which is its own kind of mercy. But the JISULIFE fan is the one still sitting out in November, when the flashes are fewer and the house is finally cool, because old habits are hard to break and I have gotten used to how little sound it makes.