Editor’s note: Cory wrote me about his medical woes on June 30 at 7 p.m. I never got it. Finally, the evening of July 8, I discussed with Cory my plan to email the warden’s office to demand to know where your email was. Clearly our call was monitored, because the next morning, voila!, the email arrived, along with several others that had become “stuck.”
I can understand why the federal Bureau of Prisons and its facility managers don’t want these accounts to get out. As the Prison Policy Initiative reported earlier this year, “Ultimately, ‘correctional health care’ is not really health care in the traditional sense when one looks at the business model and who it serves. Correctional health care systems are designed in such a way that incarcerated people’s health needs are treated more like a nuisance. The medical department in most prisons functions like a cost control service for corrections departments, organized around limiting spending and maintaining security rather than actually caring for anyones’ health. In this business, prisons are the customer, not incarcerated people.”
In 2003-04, while I was awaiting trial in federal court, the regional director for the southeast at the time, John Gaither*, told me on the phone that he hoped I died before transferring from the Florida state prison system to the BOP. I said, “Why?” He answered, “Because you will be coming to us at the point in your life when your age and medical status is going to cost us a lot of money.”
I was transferred to federal custody on Halloween in 2018. At my initial screening, I told the medical staff that I had already had four operations due to colon cancer. I also documented that I had received virtually no dental care while housed for more than 20 years in the Florida system. Later, while reading some case law, I discovered a Supreme Court case in which a federal inmate filed a lawsuit claiming cruel and unusual punishment due to the denial of dental treatment and even pain medication; as a result, he had lost most of his teeth and suffered to a cruel and unusual degree. The court ruled that, “An inmate held in custody should realize that they will not receive medical treatment as would a regular citizen. And denying him pain medication is also not grounds because pain never killed or permanently harmed anyone!”
That proved prophetic.
Last year, when I arrived at FCI Fairton (New Jersey) and went to my initial medical exam, the doctor noted that I have serious medical issues that should be treated at a Care III BOP facility. Nevertheless, he assured me I would be given the proper care at Fairton (only a level II). Well, he lied.
To sum up my medical issues I will break it down. I have all of the medical problems below – none of which have ever been treated at Fairton (or USP Tucson before that, for that matter):
- Severe nerve damage in my left arm that causes extreme pain in my elbow down to my wrist and hand. If it’s even bumped, the pain throbs. (This was caused by a car accident that severed my left bicep in half.) . It is a problem whenever I try to tie my shoes or carry a tray to the table during chow. My hand throbs even when I am just laying in bed. For awhile, I was given cortisone shots as a temporary measure (while supposedly awaiting surgery). But that stopped more than two years ago. I was called to Medical on June 25, and after going over all my issues, I asked the P.A. if he could give me cortisone shots to my hands to relieve the pain. He said he could do it. Then he took my blood pressure, listened to my lungs, pronounced me fit and then said,”See you later.” Meaning…no injections.
- Osteonecrosis (death of bone tissue due to lack of oxygen supply) in my left hip and have been awaiting surgery for more than three years. When I was finally sent to a surgeon for this condition, he asked the escorting officer for my MRI images. The officer informed him that Medical hadn’t given him the disc! The doctor told the officer to take me back to the facility and set another appointment and to be sure to bring it with me. I never saw that doctor, or any other for that condition, again. Now, that MRI is too old. I am awaiting another MRI that has been approved for months now.
- A host of food allergies, including milk and chicken (yes, I was tested for them). My digestive tract does not process a lot of food very well or completely. For example, if I eat too much peanut butter at once or too often, it doesn’t break down and I end up with an intestinal blockage. Once, when I had to live on peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches at another prison, I developed a lump about the size of a handball that couldn’t pass into my lower bowel. (Peanut butter is cheap and filling, and it was better than the prison food. But I didn’t realize that the “honey” they sold us wasn’t real honey; it was 100% corn syrup flavored to taste like honey. I couldn’t process it.) And as I write this, I’m reacting to something else; in the last two weeks, I have had to get two shots of Benadryl because I am erupting in boils all over my face and neck and my butt. Plus, my eyes swelled shut. They allowed me to go to Medical because the cop in the dorm freaked out because I look like a Zombie. But they aren’t trying to manage the problem with a proper diet. When the PA told me that my bad cholesterol has jumped from 160 to 195, I said that’s because I have been eating junk food from the commissary, since they won’t give me my prescribed diet. When I get hungry I eat junk instead of stuff I know will make me sick! But it’s easier, I guess, to shoot me up when I need it.
My symptoms are so bad that the federal judge who heard my case filed a court order stating the foods I cannot eat. (In addition, because of the prior removal of my gallbladder and several feet of intestine, there are a lot of other foods I can no longer eat. I cannot even drink a soda and I love soda.) When I was at USP Big Sandy, the Health Services Administrator told me, “If the doctor gives you a special diet I will make sure you get it.” After an appointment with a gastroenterologist, the doctor handed the HSA the prescription, then I waited several months, while trying not to complain. When I finally said something, we had a meeting with the BOP doctor and dietician and the dietician said that, “when you stop buying items from the canteen that you shouldn’t eat, I’ll approve your diet.” I asked, “What exactly am I getting that I should not get?” And believe it or not, he said, “I don’t know.” - A severe case of IBS-C (irritable bowel syndrome with constipation) and diverticulitis, which require a diet high in soluble fiber. Due to the severity of the spasms and resulting thrombosis, I required surgery in the past for a prolapsed rectum and tearing of the intestinal and abdominal wall. I’ve been sent out for a colonoscopy 22 times during my time in the BOP, but Medical never actually does anything to help me manage my constant discomfort. What I need is the right diet!
- Several hernias.
- Decaying teeth. I have been on a national waiting list for dental treatment for seven years. All they will do if I go to dental sick call is pull teeth. They won’t even put in a temporary filling, no matter how urgent it is.
- Dizziness/vertigo (my latest issue). I began experiencing dizziness recently and was put on medication for a month. An outside doctor recommended I see an ENT to check for a possible inner ear infection, but the HSA said, “We don’t send people to ENTs.” When I tried to get a refill of the medication, I was told it was not on formulary and would need to be approved by region. I never got it. Several weeks later, I walked up a flight of stairs to plug my tablet in and on the way back down, everything went sideways and I found myself on the floor at the bottom of the stairs with a pain in my leg and ankle that I cannot even find the words to describe!
On May 10, I fell down a flight of stairs again. I didn’t go to medical immediately because it’s well known that if a medical emergency happens, we will get locked down. By the next day, I was in such pain I was ready to scream. I went to Medical and the first question they asked was, “Were you high?” Some staff also accused me of faking a fall to get a bottom bunk and no-stairs pass. But I have had those passes since I came to Faitron. I just wasn’t assigned to a lower-tier cell and a button bunk for eight months. I told the lieutenant to look at the video. He did and said, “If you were acting, you deserve an Oscar.” Then I was asked if I was going to write up staff for that neglect. They clearly didn’t want me to.
After I fell down the stairs the first time, Medical gave me eight tablets of ibuprofen and told me to watch the call out to get an X-ray, which I didn’t get. Over the next two weeks, I went to sick call regularly to get something for the pain; I begged them for a shot of non-narcotic Toradol and they told me I would have to wait to see the PA. Almost two months later, I was seen. After going over everything, he asked me which of my ills I would like to deal with first. How do I answer that? My left arm, wrist and hand hurts so bad I can feel them throb and only cortisone shots help, temporarily. I need surgery. My hip? Surgery. My intestinal problems? The proper diet. But all I hear is, “Drink more water and take ibuprofen!”
I have had inmates tell me the only way to get treated is to have your family raise hell or just lay down on the ground and refuse to get up! But I have no family members who care that much, and I just cannot get myself to do something so shameless. It does not matter if you are a no-problem-follow-the-rules inmate. Nothing works. That is why so many people die in federal custody.
* Knowing that I was on my way to the feds, I placed a call to the regional director to ask some questions, and lo and behold, I was able to talk to him!
