“I haven’t really seen your wound from the start. How is it to you?” I asked the middle-aged, male inmate with a haggard-looking face.
“Actually, it looks much better,” he quickly replied with a positive tone.
If not for my strong stomach, perhaps, trained during my nursing school years, I held my breath as I slowly opened the dressing on his left, inner thigh. Nursing staff usually changed his dressing everyday during the morning hours specifically scheduled in their unit. He missed that day’s dressing change as he was included in the doctor’s sick call follow-up.
His wound was so deep. A big piece of muscle missing in the center as the surrounding tissues appeared pinkish. There was no more bleeding that was previously charted in his notes. A wound as a result of a dog bite when he tried resisting his arrest.
I cleansed it well with a wound cleanser and packed it with a special thin strip of dressing. I asked him to take a deep breath as I applied the gel that would aid in the wound’s healing. As I was applying the big dressing that would cover the wound, he started whining.
“Don’t use that! That’s not the dressing they used,” he uttered.
“I know, Sir. But as I removed your dressing, I noticed the redness around the edges of the former dressing. I wanted to make sure your skin is not getting irritated from that kind of dressing. I want to try this non-allergenic one. But you need to trust me. If you don’t like it, you can tell the nurse in the morning to change it when they do your dressing change.”
He didn’t know what to say. His mouth did not protest anymore. He finally realized that he needed to let the nurses have their way in treating his wounds. Things might not be the same. Things might change because it would depend on the needs of his wound.
How often we also resist the leading of the Spirit? He is quick to reach out and never holds His arm to save us. But we must come to His presence, broken and willing to surrender. Everything. Daily.
“We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” – 1 Corinthians 2:12 (NIV)
