The Inmate With The Heart Problem

"Do you know what that means?" I asked the Charge Nurse last night at work.

"That was embarrassing. That whatever reason I sent the inmate for, he was treated for something else."

She just smiled but knew where I was coming from as she also went through that somehow, as our county hospital sometimes fails to evaluate the sick inmates further. The hospital sometimes doesn't understand that our prison is not equipped with other medical stuff needed to treat the sick inmates.

I saw his figure disappeared behind the restroom in the waiting area. Upon emerging, he was fixing the strands of his dark hair with his hands on each side of his head. His hair very wet from the water he doused it with.

He was only 24. Well-built. Tall. Scanning his medical chart prior to his arrival in Infirmary, I gathered he often came complaining of chest pain. Always demanding that he needed to have a cardiac echo done because someone told him he had some heart issues. Evading the symptoms and the demands he started whining about, I explained that I was not ignoring his complaint of chest pain but I was trying to rule out if there were any other possible causes as no cause was ever found out anyway from the last time he made a trip to ER.

"You know, like what were you doing prior to having this pain?" I continued...

"Were you exercising heavily or some other games in the yard?"

"I told you, Nurse. I was just resting on my bed." Then, he paused as if he didn't want to spill the next words.

"2 days ago, yes, I did 200 burpees...But I didn't want to go to the hospital so I didn't complain," he softly uttered though it was only him and I chatting in front of the Exam Room I already opened and with the EKG machine nearby.

I asked him to urinate and tested his urine for presence of blood. The urine dipstick came back positive for a large amount of blood. I sensed he could be having Rhabdo. So I decided to send him out with the help of our Transportation Deputy.

When he got back from being treated in ER, most of written notes were about his heart. Nothing was addressed regarding the symptoms I suspected. He probably demanded for his heart to be examined more that all the doctor's orders were about having cardiac echo and that he had a history of Congestive Heart Failure. Yet, all the exams they did were marked normal, including his urine dipstick.

"How could that be?" I asked the Charge Nurse.

"Either there was something wrong with my eyes because I saw the result or there was something wrong with our test strips." She didn't know what to say.

As I talked to the inmate prior to sending him back to his unit, he thanked me and that he said he felt much better. I reassured him but couldn't help and asked him if they said anything regarding the "burpees" he did. He didn't say anything but..."Oh yeah, the nurse there did tell me that I had a little bit of blood in my urine but it should be okay."

I already knew. He didn't say anything about those exercises he did and kept on insisting regarding his heart condition though nothing was previously found at a well-known hospital.

As I kept writing about all my observations and the inmate's statement in his chart, I noticed how the ER doctor had noted that he was diaphoretic (sweating profusely) when he wasn't as I examined him. It dawned on me that he went to the restroom twice and kept wetting his hair. I warned the other nurses because of the possibility of him always coming down for complaints of chest pains. I left a note inside the chart to observe him if he would do that behavior again to make it look like he was in distress.

Just like that inmate, we all make demands in our prayers to God. We want things to happen our way without understanding first that He has the best reasons even when we don't understand why things happen in our lives. We often think about ourselves and always forget to think about what God wants from us. What we want seems to be complicated at times. What God wants from us is one and plain simple:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12:30 NIV)

It is only by putting Him first in our hearts that our lives will be in order.

 "Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need."
- Matthew 6:33 (NLT)