Things that go bump in the night

There is a tiny chest of drawers which doubles as a step up to our bed for the most elderly of our three cats (Caligula: at almost 2000 years old is one of the few remaining Roman era cats still alive, curiously a sex change occurred sometime in the middle ages, Caligula is now a she).  The chest/step is on my side of the bed and the surface of the step is about one foot from the floor and about 1' 6" below the surface of the bed.

I had never given this little artifact much thought - that is until last night at about 2:00 am when my body came into contact with its rather sharp front edge.  Moments before I had been asleep and  experiencing a particularly frightening dream involving severe teachers wearing stained and ancient religious robes in decrepit Dickensian dark classrooms and corridors.  Moments before waking I had leapt from a hiding place to avoid being caught.  

That was it.  I was then brutally awake and aware of a burning pain in my right hip, there was a loud crash and I was on the floor with the little chest of drawers leaning on its side against me and most of the bed covers on top of me.  My DW (darling wife) was sitting up clutching what remained of the bed covers and wondering what on earth had happened.  Later DW told me that as she woke up all three cats jumped in unison off the other side of the bed as I moaned on the floor!

I don't appear to be seriously damaged although I have a corker of a bruising mass just under my trouser belt line on the afore mentioned right hip.  I'll spare you the digital photograph, spectacular though it is.

I'm intrigued.  I must have fallen out of bed as a child but I have no memory of doing so.  This is the first time that I can recall that this has happened to me, but I imagine (and hope) it is not uncommon.  Curiously my Mum used to tell us boys that if we ate cheese too close to bedtime we would have nightmares.  What do you know?  I had indeed enjoyed some slivers of a particularly nutty and delicious flavored parmesan (on special at Hannafords) not long before retiring to bed the previous evening.