At the time when I learned first-hand how dangerous it could be to become seriously ill in prison, I was working as the plumber in my first facility.  I didn't have any personal experience in that area, but the CO who ran the Paint Shop also ran Plumbing, and he needed a second inmate to handle all the minor repairs in the aging prison.  About a week after I started, the head inmate plumber was sent to "the hole" and eventually was transferred to a higher-security location, so that left me as the only plumber.  Since things had a tendency to break every day, I learned on the job, and learned fast.

Because I had to spend a lot of my time working with broken toilets, urinals, and drain lines in the bathrooms, I sent requests to the medical department to try and get them to approve hepatitis inoculations for me.  I knew they provided them for the inmates who worked at the sewage treatment plant (our facility was not on city water - we had our own well, water tanks, and sewage plant) so I figured I should get them as well.  Unfortunately my requests were always turned down, because the "policy" was to only give the shots to inmates who came in direct contact with sewage.  Somehow they had decided that plumbers, who use jetters and augers on clogged drain lines constantly, didn't operate in those conditions.  I found myself without that protection, but very aware of my personal health and the state of my body as a result.  In addition, I had suffered from malignant melanoma back in 2000 and worried about another occurrence, so I kept a close eye on my skin and my freckles.

One morning I woke up to find a small bump on the underside of my right wrist.  It itched terribly, but wasn't much bigger than a mosquito bite.  I shrugged it off and went about my day.  By bedtime, however, it had started to look more like a pimple or maybe a cyst.  It was red, growing upward (not so much outward), and beginning to resemble a miniature volcano in design.  When I awoke the following morning, that's exactly what it looked like: a mini volcano, with a whitish-green crater in the center.  I knew enough to realize the green meant this was an infection, and possibly a bad one.  My stomach flipped over when I realized two more things: first, that underneath this volcano there was a cyst that was about the size of a blueberry, stretching the skin around my wrist tightly; worse, much worse, and much scarier, I had a small bump on my left butt cheek which was itching like crazy...the same way the one on my wrist had itched 24 hours before!

I skipped breakfast to go to Sick Call, where I signed up for an appointment with the doctor a few hours later.  Well, except you don't get to see "the doctor."  Instead you get to see a Physician's Assistant.  He examines you and passes on his diagnosis to the doctor, who prescribes any necessary medication.  The mere act of getting a prescription could be a joke.  One particular PA supposedly had been a veterinary assistant in the Philippines.  True or not, I do know that the two expressions you were almost guaranteed to hear when he examined you, delivered in his thick accent, were "pull down your pants" and "you buy Ibuprofen at commissary."  Magically, the ibuprofen was a cure-all on the level of some elixir sold at a traveling show by a barker in a top hat and loud jacket.  However, the word from inmates with more experience was that our medical care in this place was actually better than in most facilities. 

As luck (or lack of it) would have it, I was examined by "pull down your pants", and this time I wanted to pull my pants down.  He told me he didn't see anything on my rear end, but for the "spider bite" on my wrist he prescribed some antibiotic ointment, the same bacitracin stuff you find on any drug store shelf.  I suppose I felt slightly relieved that this supposedly-qualified medical professional felt that whatever I was suffering from was of only minor concern.  I went back to work and picked up the cream that afternoon.  The urge to pick at, or pop, the volcano on my wrist was nearly irresistible, but I managed to fight it and went to bed hoping the ointment would do the trick.

The following morning, however, I was much less hopeful.  Not only did my wrist look purple, the cyst underneath was now grape-sized.  Volcanic was still the best way to describe whatever this was, as unlike a normal pimple where the head sticks out, the whitish-green head on this thing was actually recessed within the center of the growth.  I was also terrified to realize I could feel a lump under the skin of my ass the size of a golf ball.  Worse, this was Saturday, so there was no normal Sick Call to attend.  I would have to go to "Control" and get the officer on duty to agree my condition was serious enough to warrant a phone call to the PA, and an unscheduled appointment.

My big fear was that I had developed MRSA, which is a dangerous and highly-contagious antibiotic-resistant staph infection which seems to have become more widespread in the last few years.  At first it was known mainly in overcrowded prisons, but recently even professional sports teams have had to deal with outbreaks.  In fact, the prison I was being held at had suffered an outbreak the prior summer.  The eight or nine inmates infected had to be held in quarantine in "the hole" until they were no longer contagious.  From the little bit I'd read about MRSA, there were only a few antibiotics which could treat it, and even then it could be a struggle to completely eradicate it.  I shivered as I walked to Control, both from the unnatural lump on my backside and the worry that I would be locked up in solitary for weeks until I had recovered...or died, whichever came first.

And as I approached the Control Center, it suddenly occurred to me that if the thing I my wrist had started as a blueberry and then grown to a grape, this new sore might grow to a much larger size than the golf ball I was currently dealing with.  "Don't get sick" now sounded like the best advice I could have been given!

(to be continued - watch for Part 4 in the next few days)