If you are insured and employeed out here in the brave new free world then the options available to you to receive exemplary medical care are second to none and excellent. So much knowledge is gained yearly and such advanced improvements are made by leaps and bounds in all medical techniques and procedures annually that undergoing a once life threatening operation is now commonplace, mundane and relatively risk free. The medical profession is pressing upon my mind currently because my dear, beautiful and vibrant mother just underwent a lengthy six and a half hour surgery which was successful. Thank God for that. She is still in the hospital recuperating and I'm happy to say she is in high spirits and doing great thanks to professional medical care, the love of her family and her faith in the only true God. I just returned from the hospital earlier and the care available to people out here compared to the lack of medical care and treatment offered to inmates in prison is so disproportionate that I feel the urge to write an article about this pressing issue. I know alot of you have personally witnessed the shoddy or non-existent medical treatment within prisons throughout America through your loved ones currently incarcerated. Many of you have contacted me recently about the appalling medical care in prisons. I found out some years back upon entering TDCJ that I was HCV positive, which is Hepatitis C. I can't say for certain, but in all probability it's a safe bet to say I picked up this nasty little virus some years back in my dazed and confused state while using intraveneous drugs and sharing a U-100 syringe. Whatever and whenever exactly I picked it up no one can say for certain. I do know that TDCJ and other prison systems throughout America have an epidemic on their hands with all the new cases of inmates contracting HCV which are being discovered weekly. Interferon and Ribovarin have been known to effectively and drastically slow down and sometimes even reverse the detrimental damage to the liver brought on through the progression of HCV. Yet rarely were any inmates with HCV given these life sustaining drugs. Prison medical departments have set up a system to supposedly save their ass from lawsuits by claiming that an inmate must have one years worth of elevated ALT enzyme readings of over 100 before the inmate can even be eligible to be sent to a legitimate hospital to receive a liver biopsy and then, if damage is severe enough, to possibly be recommended to take these drugs at the states expense. Whoa!!! Hold em up! We have a MAJOR problem here. If an inmate has ALT count readings above 100 for over a year there's a good likelihood he's already lapsed into the severe danger zone in regards to liver damage and may already be suffering from liver cancer or cirrhosis of which both are usually fatal anything short of a liver transplant. Needless to say inmates anywhere are not at the top of the list for liver transplants. This rampant problem with HCV treatment, or ahum more aptly put non- treatment or mistreatment, is only one small portion of a prime example of medical neglect being exhibited daily throughout the prison systems in America. If an inmate indeed is property of the respective state he is warehoused in, as the lawmakers love to so eloquently put it in their grandiose terminology, then the state is certainly liable to offer advanced, cutting edge, and if the inmate is willing, experimental treatment for any of the host of ailments and maladies the inmate may suffer from. What we see before us my friends is the impetus to strike back at the system and hit them right where it hurts- the wallet and pursestrings! I encourage any of you with loved ones that are incarcerated and suffering from an ailment which they are receiving ineffectual treatment for to file either a class action lawsuit or to take the initiative and file a lawsuit on your own. Many lawsuits brought against prison systems concerning medical issues have received favorable victories and sometime appreciable monetary compensation awards have been meted out. I need not state the obvious though in pointing out that no amount of money is just compensation for the early demise or physical suffering of a dear loved one due to the indifferent medical treatment of a loved one while behind the wire. But regardless, hit em where it hurts and possibly reform will eventually follow suit and change will gradually take place. If enough favorable victories were handed out to defendants and their loved ones then it would have the beneficial affect of encouraging more lawsuits to be filed and would begin to drain the system of almighty revenue. I can actually envision the system one day here in Texas being brought to a halt financially due to the possibility of 40 percent plus of all TDCJ inmates having HCV. If all these individuals were tested, found to be positive and demanded proper medical treatment with the threat of class action lawsuits if they don't get it, the system could feasibly be brought to a screeching halt. You can imagine correctly that the prosecutors would stop pushing for such lenghty mandatory sentences if it was known that the cost to house a man over time with HCV or some other rampantly spreading disease would total well into the millions! The potential for massive lawsuits is already in place and systems throughout the states know this. As inmates begin serving lengthier and lengthier sentences with a set time to serve flat before being eligible for parole more and more will succumb to the ravaging effects of these incurable diseases over time and the state will have to foot the bill as more and more people file lawsuits and force medical policy change. The neglect prison "quack" doctors and medical staff currently offer is a time bomb waiting to explode and it appears for all concerned that the fuse is burning down quickly. "Quack" is an old term used to denote a supposed medical doctor or self professed practitioner of medicine who in actuality has little or no skill concerning the field of medicine and the science of treating disease. If you ever find the ample time and resources run a background check on any so called "doctor" (ha ha) practicing medicine within the confines of an institution. For the most part I imagine you'll find some very unsavory characters with an even worse reputation when it comes to their original freeworld pursuits in the medical profession. I'll wager you find a high percentage of quacks within their ranks and very few bonafide, competent practitioners of medicine. As the saying goes, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.... hee hee... however for the sake of argument here we'll just look at the part if it quacks. Plenty of quacks running a sham behind those walls to collect a paycheck and do absolutely nothing to help their forced patients who have become a number. I won't mention a name or an exact unit, just suffice to say that it took place right here in the Lone Star State. There is, or was, a quack working on a prison unit who used to be a well respected surgeon in the free world with an illustrious career before The Mistake! When you're dealing with mistakes in surgery it only takes one big one to forever taint your capability as an expert in the medical field. He was meant to remove an appendix from a particular patient and after cutting said individual open instead performed a totally unnecessary and different procedure and sewed the patient up with the appendix still intact! After a lawsuit and much cajoling he was allowed to still practice medicine. Guess where he wound up as chief quack?!! Bingo! On a prison unit where his patients could either see him as the only doctor on the unit or go with no medical attention at all. I think it would be wise for all concerned on that unit to take the latter, and avoid any medical attention at all rather than see that quack! There are a million and one horror stories concerning quacks in prison. Most are based at least partly on fact. Scary thought. The inmate population is growing older and older and this issue is coming to fruition and demands attention and reform. Out of sight out of mind is one technique prison officials use to deal with seriously diseased individuals. They herd em off to a "medical" unit which is nothing more than a prison unit with a couple of extra quacks to visit on occasion and receive still further improper treatment and advice. These units are basically used to warehouse seriously sick individuals in a quieter environment in the hopes that they will die silently without raising too much of a ruckus within the freeworld society which could foreseeably usher in lawsuits. HIV inmates in Texas are placed in an ad seg type setting and housed together. This is not to help them. Any half wit that's objective can see the reason for this practice. It's to isolate them and warehouse them for death. It's also meant to discourage other inmates from being screened for HIV or other serious illness in the fear that they will be locked down in a dungeon if they truly are positive for this or other serious diseases. In closing I once again encourage any of you with seriouly ill loved ones on the inside to file a lawsuit or to become a part of a class action lawsuit and push for reform and change. Otherwise the quacks will continue to dispense alot of nothingness, malpractice will abound and our loved ones will continue to die. Fight for change and Keep the Faith!

Hi I am a R.N. My son is currently in a county jail he has a rare medical condition. When I offered to give the nurse and the jail asministrator info on it they both said they didnt need it because they had four hundred inmates to worry about and couldnt just worry about 1. I was also told that accutane was a narcotic and a dangerous drug. In my 28 years of nursing I have never been told that accutane was a narcotic. I am very embarrassed that the state of Texas has given some one that is that stupid as a nurse. I asked her where she got her license to practice.

My 18 yr old son died from Leukemia june 2, 2002. He was diagnosed 9/10/01.
He was in the company of a kid who broke the law and was put in jail. He did not call me due to embarrassment. He was sick and begged to go to hospital. He had nose bleeds constantly. I think they took him to hosp. once and nothing was done. On 9/09/01 he threw up blood and was then taken to another hosp. They then diagnosed him, but by then he only had 4 pints of blood in his body..almost dead, literally hours from death. His white blood cells were allowed in this this time to number in the hundred thousands, which pretty much insured he would not live in remission. I saw my son the day he was brought in, he was so yellow/white, I cannot even imagine a professional nurse from that jail couldn't see somehings wrong. Especially with his constant requests to go to the hospital.
I want to sue the jail and make sure nobody elses child sits in a cell and bleeds to death. They even chained him to the hospital bed for 2 days, he was about dead! Where was he going? The charges against him were dropped. A video of the crime actually showed his non participation. There is alot more, but from this do you think I have a case? And what attorney do I get to go against the city?
Thanks

I mentioned this on another thread, but when my hubby was in county jail, there was a doctor who was indeed a quack. He used to work for a medical center in the town where I live, but he got fired. (Or he quit before they could fire him?) Anyway, I have been told he "is the worst doctor in town!" The doctor has the reputation of ignoring inmate's medical needs, even has ignored inmate's complaints of a staph infection that has been 'making the rounds.' Last I heard there was a complaint filed against him and the county jail.