As you can imagine, prison beds are not comfortable. Comfortable is utterly the wrong concept for describing how they feel. Try putting a sleeping bag on your garage floor and taking a nap while the neighbors scream all night. At any rate, at some point I likely pinched a nerve running down my arm by sleeping in my ever-breaking prison bed. A week or so later, I had a totally unrelated medical appointment (scheduled by the prison) and I mentioned to the nurse practitioner who saw me what I thought had happened. She looked at me and told me it was GERD. Now, there are, indeed, good people who work in the prison medical system, but the majority of people you are likely to encounter there have more quack than a flock of mallards. GERD is a favorite initial diagnosis from everything from COVID to cancer. To try to aid in my own recovery, I eschewed the antacids from commissary and wrote this limerick instead:
Apparently I have not heard
Of the multiple symptoms of GERD.
It’s throwing me curves
By impinging my nerves.
If I don’t eat in bed, I’ll be cured.