This story was told by a person incarcerated at Solano.
Caller: Well, like I was talking to a guy the other day, and he’s like, “You know what? I have a sore throat, and you know, the doctor didn’t even give me any lozenges or anything. He said he had never even seen me.”
You know, and I explained to the nurse that I had a sore throat, I have muscle aches, and then, you know, you have guys inside the gym where we’re at and, you know, you’ve got loud music being played, and officers don’t tell them to turn it down, and you’ve got guys that grab all the chairs and there’s no chairs for guys to sit down. And they don’t even, they don’t, it’s just like they’re nonexistent.
They just are existing without actually enforcing any rules or regulations. And that’s why we’re in this kind of mess in the first place, where they wouldn’t enforce people to wear masks which allowed the COVID to spread. But in regards to the medication, some of us have seen doctors, like myself.
I was given Tylenol and a cold suppressant, and it worked, but, I mean, it would have been nice to have lozenges because I did have a sore throat, you know. It’s just like, it’s kind of hard to explain but it’s not, it’s like almost like they give you the bare minimum.
Where, it would have been nice to see, like a doctor off the bat and say, “Hey, here’s lozenges, here’s, you know, cough drops, do you need anything else? Here’s some Aspirin, or something. What else do you guys need to help alleviate some of this?” But it’s like we got bare minimum to nothing. And some of us were actually luckier than others where we did get some care.
UCI: Right, because it sounds like it is very just sporadic of who sees a doctor and who doesn’t see a doctor, it’s very random.
Caller: Yeah exactly. Yeah. It depends on your symptoms. If you say, “I can’t breathe,” then you see a doctor. But if you don’t say the magic words, you don’t see a doctor. So that’s how it kind of works, and it’s like, you know, what do you mean there’s like a special magic word to get treatment?
And, you know, some of the inmates know the magic word, some of them don’t. And it’s a shame that, that when things like that happen, they don’t, I mean we should have all been seeing a doctor. I know when I initially came in here, they’re like “You’re going to the gym,” I’m like “For what?” They’re like, “You have COVID.” I’m like “Do I? Where’s my test at?”
And it’s like, they’re like “Well, we don’t know.” “Well do I or do I not have COVID?” They’re like “We don’t know. Just, go, get your stuff, and go to the gym.” I said, “Well I would like to know if I have COVID” and I was here three or four days and I didn’t see anybody.
And then just on chance, I said “Well, you know, it’s difficult for me to breathe, it’s like I feel like my throat’s kind of constricted and I can’t breathe.” And then that same day my doctor came down, he says, “Yeah, you’re having problems breathing, what’s going on?” I go, “Well, it feels like my throats like kind of tightening up and it’s sore, you know, my muscles are aching”, and that’s when he said, “Well I’ll give you some Tylenol.”
And he prescribed some cough suppressant called– shucks I don’t even know what it was called. Some little pill, and it somewhat worked, but not 100 percent effective, and that’s when I started talking to other guys and they were telling me that they weren’t getting any care.
