The officer on duty at the Control Center took pity on me and went ahead and called the PA, who told me to go to see him in the Medical department.  I had to sit around for an hour or so until he called me in, as he was caring for a diabetic who was feeling rather ill.  He looked at my wrist and my backside and agreed I was suffering from some sort of infection, and that the ointment I had been prescribed was not going to help.  Here is where I got my first real taste of BOP medical care: the PA explained that he was going to have the doctor prescribe me some antibiotics, which I could pick up on Sunday.  However, those antibiotics were most likely going to be completely ineffectual.  The antibiotics he wanted me to have couldn't be prescribed until I had taken the useless ones for three days.  Then I could come back, see the PA or maybe even the doctor, and they would be able to prescribe the stronger stuff.  The wonderful word "policy" was used again.  Even then, the strong antibiotics would only be prescribed for seven days, after which they'd need to get special approval to continue them.  In the meantime, I was advised to take the ones they were giving me, use the worthless ointment, and try to keep a warm compress on the cysts...although how the heck I was supposed to keep a warm compress on my ass he had no suggestion.  The compress would help draw the infection out.  It was also suggested that Monday I should come back to Sick Call again to get permission to skip work for a few days until I felt better.

By the time Monday morning rolled around, the cyst on my wrist had burst, expelling a good deal of greenish pus and blood, which I tried to keep mopping up with toilet paper.  The pain had been quite intense.  When I went to Sick Call, they gave me some adhesive bandages for my wrist, and a "lay-in" to skip work for the rest of the week.  Unfortunately for me, it was also "policy" that even though I had a lay-in, I was not allowed to lie in bed under the covers during the day, just on top of them, so my attempts to keep a warm compress on my butt cheek were questionable at best.  Plus the bathroom, my only source of hot water, was on the other side of the building from my bunk.  The cyst had now grown to, as near as I could tell, about the size of a baseball, with maybe a quarter of it sticking up above the normal surface (but still under the skin), and the rest deep within the cheek.  Sitting was terribly painful, and lying on my stomach was the only was to feel even the slightest improvement.  Even in that position, waves of pain were common.  I could barely eat, and when I did I had to balance on the side edge of the chair in the dining hall to avoid any additional pressure.  I would alternate between profuse sweating and terrible chills, and the pain made me shake all over and my teeth chatter when it was at its worst.

Tuesday night was the most miserable night I could imagine.  My skin felt stretched to the limit.  I really believed that I might go into shock, or if I did manage to fall asleep I could likely never wake up again.  I went to the trouble of writing a goodbye note to Heather, plus one to my father and stepmother, and a third to the rest of my family.  I was starting to have delusions lying in bed, or maybe I was simply going crazy.  But somehow I fell asleep, or passed out, or something.  And when I woke up, the cyst had finally started burst, leaking blood and pus onto the compress and ruining the pair of boxer shorts I was wearing.  As bad as it hurt, and as terrifying as it was, at least I figured this would be the beginning of the end.  From here on in, I'd either get better or I would whither away and die.

At Sick Call the PA on duty was Mr. "Pull Down Your Pants" again.  When I did just that, he backed away as if he'd seen something out of a horror movie.  The PA didn't even want to apply any gauze or tape a bandage on - he simply wanted to  get as far away as possible from this extra head growing out of my rear end.  At first he simply told me to continue with the antibiotics, but at my insistence he called the doctor and they went ahead and prescribed the stronger pills for me.  To my surprise, even though I was oozing a tremendous amount of disgusting thick pus, he had no interest in having me quarantined.  The PA didn't even take a culture to test and see if I had MRSA - it was "policy" (so he told me) that they only took a culture if the second antibiotics failed to work.  My lay-in was extended to the following Monday, and I was sent back to my housing unit.

When everybody was at work, I decided that at the very least I should take a shower.  In this facility we had open showers, six shower heads per room, and the last thing I wanted was for anybody else to see me this way.  The hot water was both soothing and painful, but I almost threw up when I saw the trails of blood and thick white paste flowing down the drain.  Worse, when I gently tried to clean my backside, my finger actually slipped into the open head of the cyst.  The hole was that large!  No wonder I had gotten sick, when the authorities were allowing people as sick as myself to remain in the general population, and when they continued to refer to my illness as "spider bites."  Perhaps that was "policy" too; there may have been a directive that they would not tolerate another outbreak of MRSA, or anything similar, because of the negative publicity.  I have no idea.  All I know is I let the water run for ten minutes after I was done showering in an effort to wash away anything which might make somebody else sick.  If we had been permitted access to disinfectants or useful cleaning supplies I would have covered the area in that as well, but in that facility we were not allowed to use such "dangerous" substances.

I did improve over the following two weeks, as the cyst slowly shrunk away and the blood and pus ceased to flow.  The medical staff was able to get approval for me to use the powerful antibiotics for a full 3 ½ weeks, which I guess was long enough to knock most of the infection out of my system.  I did experience another cyst on my left hip about five months later, but it did not grow nearly as large this time, perhaps simply because the area is not as fatty.  Once again they treated my "spider bite" with the weak antibiotics first, followed by two weeks of the good stuff.  After that experience, the cysts never returned.  To this day I wonder if I'm carrying any odd undetected illness in my system.

The only physical reminder I carry is a tiny scar on my right wrist.  I may have a similar scar "back there" but if I do I can't see it, and I'm not about to spend much time searching for one.  Months later I was transferred to another facility, where an inmate was sent to the hospital for over a week for what sounded very similar to what I'd suffered through, in the same physical location.   At least that let me know that it isn't necessarily that all medical care in the Bureau of Prisons is terrible - it's just inconsistent, like so much else in life.