Guards Who Stare At Goats
It occurred to me that I never told you the saga of my kidney stones. I guess I didn't wish to relive it for you so soon after the hurt. I'm strong and ready now.
Tuesday, February 23rd, in the middle of the night, I found myself on my bony knees in the not-very-clean four-stall bathroom in gear-grinding pain. My lower back felt like one of those crazed Sci-Fi monster villains had hooked a vise-grip to my midsection and was steadily tightening. If that weren't bad enough, I struggled to my feet, perched on the cold toilet while cradling my abdomen in my trembling arms and attempted to pee shards of sharp glass. It must have sounded like a wounded animal was trying to die in that dingy stale toilet. My nightclothes went from clammy to wringing wet with fevered sweat. The entire experience was the stuff of torture films and not anything a peaceful gal like me should be so directly and personally involved in.
By morning, the pain was pretty much gone, but my "whizzler" was sore from the glass-laced pee. Wednesday day and night brought nothing horrible although I felt incredibly fatigued like I'd lost a bout of midnight bear wrestling, but I bucked up and taught my 4:00 aerobics class like a champ. My whizzler was still talking to me Thursday, but nothing had knocked me on my knees, so I felt pretty confident that Tuesday night was nothing more than a random bad night. Since I'm the opposite of a hypochondriac, I ignore most aches and pains as par for the course of mammals. Thus I was ill prepared for Thursday night.
Again in the dark hours prior to dawn I ended up on the floor of the community bathroom—an area where most anything related to body fluids can and will be found. After lights-out at 10:30, only dim lights are left on in the halls and bathrooms. In the semi-darkness, doubled over and making the unearthly sounds of extreme suffering, I huddled alone for hours. By this time, I was also scarily and painfully peeing bright red blood with the glass.
With steely-jawed determination, I managed to get dressed in my grey uniform and sit up, as required, on my bunk for the 5 a.m. count. As soon as count cleared and we were released to leave our cells, I grabbed my jacket and made my way down the stairs to the rotunda.
The rotunda officer popped the door for me, probably expecting me to ask for a roll of toilet paper. When I told her that I had to "self-declare" and go to medical, she shook her head and advised, "Well, ah, it won't do ya any good. You'll have to wait for 7:00 sick call.
The male officer noticed, "I've never seen you look like this before, Mrs. Prewitt. Are you okay?" He's a nice guy, so I couldn't form any words fit for an answer; I merely grimaced and unsteadily stood my ground in the rotunda while silently bearing the unrelenting pain in my lower back and all the way up my urethra. (There has got to be a better word for pain—one with more umph—but I'm at a loss!)
This scene might have resulted in a Mexican standoff, but my dear old lifer friend Ruby Doo, who has a host of ailments and knows Medical better than anyone including the Medical staff, appeared at my side and mumbled the most beautiful words I'd ever heard, "Patty, come on with me." In my fevered pain, I noticed how angelic she looks—with caring dark chocolate eyes and creamy milk chocolate face. My Hershey angel.
Safely inside the Medical waiting area we found a fairly new COI (Correctional Officer I) babysitter at the desk who was the first to remark that he didn't know anything about Medical, "Hey, I'd never even been in here before tonight."
As he tells his story to Ruby Doo, I rush into the inmate toilet to hurt privately and pee some more glass. This toilet is brightly lit with full-throttle fluorescent bulbs, so the toilet full of shockingly red blood and the toilet paper full of clots gives me even weaker knees. Remembering that nurses need proof, I didn't flush. Ruby was there for her insulin shot, but she also stood guard over the toilet and pestered the one nurse behind the glass to come out and see the blood.
The anticipation of pending treatment leaped into my aching heart when the young nurse with a kind face recoiled at the sight, "WOW! That's fresh blood!" That's when I decided I needed to tell her, "And it's not menstrual blood. I don't even own a uterus and haven't for 26 years."
If I could have danced during this ordeal, I would have demonstrated an Irish jig when she ordered me, "Come back to the examining room with me." Yes!!! I was going to get to leave the waiting room and enter the part of Medical where there are examining tables, instruments, medication and, most importantly, salvation. I won't die curled around the brown-sticky base of a porcelain prison toilet!"
Of course I had to step on the scale. No matter what's happening, we must weigh first as if our ailment might be related to our poundage. Then she took my temperature and blood pressure in the hall, but when she led me to the exam room and motioned for me to sit on the end of the table on white butcher paper crinkled by the last customer, I exhaled. I'm in.
I told her what had been going on with me while she entered my inmate number in the computer to find my file. She admittedly didn't know what to do so she picked up the phone and called. The person on the other end suggested she take my hemoglobin count. This gal had never used that particular hand-held instrument, but between us we milked enough blood from my pricked finger to get a reading, and the numbers looked good to the phone voice. We had ruled out the possibility that I'm bleeding to death. She then told me that I had to come back for sick call. Here we go again.
I ended up back in the waiting room hunched up on a hard wooden bench a few feet from the fidgety guard who also waited impatiently for his relief officer to show. I hurt too much to chat, which suited him just fine since all he did was stare out the window and nervously tap his pencil and his foot.
A couple of hours after I started my odyssey, sick call was finally called and after a debate with the relief officer who insisted that I couldn't come to 7 a.m. sick call since I was supposed to be at work now and must come back at 4:00, I again was allowed back to an exam room. (I actually didn't debate. I merely turned away, shut my eyes, bowed my head, and would neither talk nor budge. A team of wild white shirts couldn't have driven me off. And, I might add, I learned that trick from my stubborn daughter Sarah when she was around three.)
Another new nice nurse. Another explanation. Another phone call. More computer pecking, and within 10 minutes I was shuffling down the sidewalk back to my dorm gripping a card of 20 antibiotics with instructions to take two a day for 10 days and drink lots of water. I longed to curl up in fetal position on my own hard bunk and nurse my pain in private.
When a day starts off on the wrong foot, it usually stays wrong. I entered the rotunda in hopes of passing through unnoticed like a ghost, but that dream went poof when all four officers turned their sharp eyes on me like they'd spotted Jimmy Hoffa, "There she is!"
They were all talking at once about contraband and waving a plastic bag containing three white plastic clothes hangers, an old black woven-leather belt from the 80's when we used to wear them tied like a saddle cinch on the side, and my stained plastic storage bowl containing a bag of dry refried beans, bag of instant rice and a small summer sausage. Evidently my cell had been "routinely" searched. (Our areas are searched/torn up at least twice a month for reasons of safety and security of the institution.)
Have you ever heard of fainting goats? If they are startled or stressed, they simply suspend their animation. I guess I took a cue from fainting goats, because I dropped like a rock. That shut them up for a moment—or at least I didn't hear them for the moments I was out. When sound returned to my world, a nurse had been summoned to the rotunda to check my blood pressure and pulse. One of the officers, our regular wing officer, had ordered Carlene to fetch me a cup of water and a cold wash cloth. This nurse, different one, decided that I would live and left me to deal with the rotunda.
I was allowed to go to my room, which was completely torn up from the search. My bed was not only unmade, it was mauled and the mattress rolled up. But I sat on the hard steel and lay over the mattress hump to rest. I didn't have the strength to tackle clean-up.
No rest for the wicked. Two COI's and a white shirt appeared in my room and shut the door behind them to interrogate me about my contraband. For some reason they were convinced that I was being "strong-armed" for canteen items. The strange officer (by strange, I mean she was not assigned to my House and I didn't know her) said that she'd found my bowl of food items "hidden" in the room. I assured them all that it was not hidden but tucked away at the back of my locked on the bottom shelf where it always is. I'm not the type of personality to be bulled for anything. This was the only truly pathetic day I've had in recent history. Then I just shut my eyes, like a toddler, in hopes that they would disappear. It worked!
Just when I thought I might live, a huge pain struck me and I hurled myself across the hall to the toilet to pass some more glass. This time I was not alone. Although I was behind the toilet door, I realized two of the girls in the bathroom had started sobbing for me when they heard my wounded moans. To top things off, the one unfamiliar female officer yelled at me to come out of the toilet NOW! Then she hollered at the girls who were crying and caused then to cry harder and louder. So we now have females wailing, moaning, screaming, sobbing and blubbering. And I'm not even talking about me!
I don't know how long before I finally exited, but I passed a grain of rough gravel in with all that blood. That paltry particle resting calmly on the bottom of the porcelain had caused all this trouble, but it was OUT and I felt such glorious relief! Swinging open the stall door in triumph, I realized that Mel and Jane were still there crying and the guard was also red-faced and still yelling for me to get out. Oops.
While I washed my hands, the officer impatiently ordered me to get my receipts and come to the rotunda right now. I could hardly hear her for the two girls babbling. I nodded yes, so she left. Mel and Jane pounced on me like I was their long lost mother. I assured them I was going to live—now.
Back in my cell looking for my receipt envelope in the tornado aftermath the search had left, my caseworker showed up. She, too, has a history with kidney stones and commiserated, but the visit with her had made me tardy for my appointment in the rotunda. My name was announced peevishly over the loudspeaker. I explained to my young blonde caseworker what was going on, and she walked me to the rotunda and explained to the disgruntled officer that the ladies who have been here a long time have items in their possession that they can have because these times have not been outlawed. My hangers and old belt were handed back, and since I produced receipts for the canteen food, I once again escaped the grip of wrath unscathed.
In case you're wondering, my whizzler was sore for a few days, but so far this old fainting nanny goat has remained pain-free to fight another day. I was called to see the doctor yesterday about my blood pressure, which keeps creeping up in response to my stressful environment and poor diet, and during our short meeting he didn't mention the February "self declare" incident. Of course I didn't either. As I said before, I do my best to forgive and forget negative situations.
This reminds me of several winters ago when I succumbed to a horrible stomach flu. I mean VIOLENT! Janiece was so worried about me that she begged the sergeant for permission to come upstairs to check on me. Shivering and huddled on my narrow steel bunk under every piece of bedding and fabric I own—my jacket et., I thought I heard Janiece's voice. What? That couldn't be Janiece. She lives downstairs. (We are not allowed, by housing unit rules, to travel between wings or floors or even go into someone else's cell.)
Next thing I know Janiece has pounced on me with her sweet face close demanding, "Are you alright? I haven't seen you in two days!" "Janiece, what are you doing out-of-bounds? Good Lord!" She explained, "I got permission. Relax! I'm sick of this. Get better right now! You look pathetic, and I don't like it." Yes, she made it all about her. Isn't that typical of kids?
Good taxpaying citizens may think we prisoners are scum of the earth, worthless, unredeemable, filth. But I have found the opposite to be true. When push comes to shove, we rise up and care for each other like prisoners of war. Girls kept my bedding and nightclothes washed and fresh, kept fluids nearby, and kept a watchful eye on me throughout the entire horror of my fever, vomiting, diarrhea—you get the picture.
When Governor John Ashcroft commuted the no-parole murder sentence of Helen Martin and after 13 years behind bars she returned to St Louis in 1994, she told me on the phone that she missed the sisterhood of prison. "Patty, if I fell out on the sidewalk on my way to work today, pedestrians would walk over and around me. But in prison someone was always there to help me when I was sick or listen to me when I was blue. I always had a shoulder to cry on, and I sure miss knowing that someone has my back. It's lonely out here."
Well, in this "community of suffering" we do our level best to keep everyone afloat both physically and emotionally. So don't worry, kids, I always find compassion and love—even in this hellhole.