This is a new blog (for me) I found today so I wanted to give him some space. I have been writing about the medical issues in prison lately and this fits right in with it. But best of it brings out the human element of what it means to care about even when it puts your life at risk. When you make the right cause you get the right effect to go along with it. Unfortunately his Cellie was too sick. The prison or prison corporation that ran the medical unit, combined with apathy from the prison warden and staff allowed him to deteriorate to a point there was no possibility of quality of life.
Did it have to happen like this? No, it didn’t. It happened because there is no respect for the lives of people incarcerated. I mean everyone. From the falsely accused and those forced into plea deals, to pretty crimes, mentally ill, immigrants, murderers and everything in between. No one cares. People die with easily treatable illnesses, but because they are there their life has absolutely NO value. And that is a crime. It needs to be changed. Corporations should not be allowed to put their bottom line before human life. Period.
Mike was sentenced to fifty years to life for stealing $200 from a convenience store. Mike was a Jehovah’s witness. Mike was my cellee. And Mike was sick.
When I first moved into the cell with Mike, I wasn’t sure what to think. He was old, at least he looked it. He walked with a cane and slept with a CPAP strapped to his face. Other than his apnea, Mike didn’t really know what was wrong with him and the prison doctors certainly didn’t know either. What he did know was that it was getting progressively harder for him to walk each day.
When I moved in, Mike had already been waiting six months for the “emergency” transfer he so desperately needed which would house him in a medical facility where he might get better treatment. A bed had been made available at a medical prison a few months earlier…
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