It has been my experience that because of institutional and individual racism

Chapter 28
Sick Call
I never went to the hospital unless it was absolutely necessary. Medical
treatment at Angola was—as it is at all prisons—deplorable. There are long
delays, bad doctors, and a lot of misdiagnoses in prison hospitals. At Angola,
aspirin was given for everything. To be put in restraints, then driven in a
patrol car to the hospital, then have to sit for hours in a small individual pen
the size of a mop closet that smelled like urine and vomit for two aspirin
wasn’t worth it to me. I could get aspirin out of the canteen. Also, in order to
see a doctor, versus a nurse, you had to declare yourself an emergency. I
never felt that any sickness or injury I had was an emergency. A lot of times
for cuts and bruises I used an old remedy my grandmother taught me: my
own saliva. It worked well to speed healing.
For years the only system available to us to ask for medical treatment was
this: a nurse or an EMT would come to the tier between one a.m. and three
a.m. and call down the tier, “Sick call,” from the front gate, and anyone who
wanted to see a doctor had to stand at attention at the bars of his cell door.
They came in the middle of the night and not during the day because they
didn’t give a shit about prisoner health or medical treatment. Coming at night
was a way they could cut down on prisoners asking for medical care by staff.
After announcing sick call, the nurse or EMT would then walk down the
tier and ask the prisoners about their symptoms, sometimes giving out over-
the-counter medications on the spot. A lot of times arguments would break
out, the prisoner saying things like, “You aren’t a doctor. I am in pain, I need
to see a doctor.” We all knew an EMT or a nurse wasn’t qualified to do a
proper examination through the bars of a cell.
Prisoners started filing lawsuits. The claim was “deliberate indifference”
to serious medical needs, a violation of the 8th Amendment. A judge
wouldn’t take that claim seriously unless the prisoner could demonstrate

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three things: that failure to treat his condition would inflict further significant
injury or unnecessary pain; that there was deliberate indifference on the part
of the prison, meaning that the failure to respond to a prisoner’s pain or
medical need was purposeful; and that there was harm caused to the prisoner
by that indifference. For prisoners at Angola that was no problem. After
being flooded with lawsuits the federal courts got involved and came down
on the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Angola was forced to come up with a
process that would allow prisoners to see doctors.
At some point in the eighties we got a new system: sick call forms. These
forms were handed out to prisoners who wanted to see a doctor. We checked
off the symptoms we had from many listed on the form and there was a space
where we could describe in our own words what the medical problem was.
We folded the form and placed it between our bars and waited. The forms
would be picked up and were, supposedly, read by a doctor who made an
evaluation of which prisoners could come to the hospital and which were to
be treated in their cells. If a prisoner was too sick to wait for all that, if he was
throwing up, for example, or bleeding, he could declare himself an
emergency and he’d be taken to the hospital, eventually.
A lot of prisoners who needed to see a doctor avoided the hospital
because anyone who went—for any reason—could be written up for
“malingering.” A prisoner could have visible signs of illness—be bowled
over in pain, flushed with fever, spitting up blood, or have a rash that didn’t
heal—and could still be accused of malingering. That happened to me in the
summer of 1982. I got a rash around my waist that kept coming and going. I
reported it on a sick call form and they brought me an ointment to put on the
rash. Since it was summer, the heat, as usual, was unrelenting and the rash
got worse. I used the ointment they gave me and wrapped toilet paper around
me like a cummerbund. The rash flared up worse. When my skin started
oozing pus I declared myself an emergency and after a couple of days I was
taken to the hospital. They accused me of malingering, of doing something to
cause the rash, because it kept coming and going. “How am I doing
something that gives me a rash that goes completely around my waist?” I
asked. I finally saw a doctor who scraped the scabs off me and gave me a
prescription cream. Back in my cell I realized I might be having an allergic
reaction to the elastic band inside my underwear. I put the medicated cream
on the rash and wore my underwear inside out, rolling the elastic waistband
down under my rash, and it finally cleared up. I got a write-up for going to

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the hospital.
If a prisoner had a life-or-death problem usually the whole tier had to take
action. We’d shake the bars and holler until someone came. Once King was
out on his hour and he noticed that our good friend and comrade Colonel
Nyati Bolt, who had been ill for days, was lying under his bunk. The man had
been to the hospital two or three times and been sent back to the tier with
aspirin. Now he was under his bunk, he said, to “escape the pain from the
light.” His head hurt so badly that the light hurt him through his closed eyes.
King, at the risk of being beaten, refused to go back into his cell at the end of
his hour until medical personnel came to the tier and took Bolt to the hospital.
We later found out that Bolt was having a stroke. King may have saved his
life.
For very serious illnesses, like cancer, prisoners were treated and kept at
the hospital but often preferred to come back to CCR between treatments.
Solitary confinement prisoners aren’t put in a regular ward in the hospital;
they are locked in a room by themselves with only a bed, bench, toilet, and
sink.
Years of cell confinement, lack of exercise, and low-quality food had taken
their toll on my health. In my thirties, I was diagnosed with high blood
pressure and put on medication. I was told to cut down on salt, a difficult task
in prison when most food that can be purchased from the canteen—canned
meat, chips, bottled hot peppers, instant soup—is filled with salt. I didn’t
worry about it. I didn’t dwell on it. There was nothing I could do about it. For
most health problems I self-medicated by running in the yard—sweating out
colds and fevers, working out swollen knees and sore joints. I drank hot tea
with a dab of Vicks VapoRub in it for sore throats.
If I had what I called a “sugar crash,” during which I felt faint or overly
exhausted just sitting in my cell, I’d eat some candy. In my forties, I was at
the hospital having a checkup when the doctor looked up from my chart and
asked me, “How long have you had diabetes?” I’d never been told I had
diabetes. I was put on pills, which regulated my blood sugar. Years later my
mom would be diagnosed with diabetes. In my sixties, when my lawyers got
me to a non-prison-doctor for the first time in 40 years, I was diagnosed with
hepatitis C. I didn’t ever think about the sadness of it, or the pain of it, or the
unfairness. My attitude about my health has always been: I’m alive, keep
moving.

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