This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Tracy.
Hello PrisonPandemic,
I’m glad that you reached out. It gives me hope that there are people out in the world who care about what’s going on with the part of society that’s cast aside. Not being able to see our family takes a mental toll on you that can only be explained with tears and sobs. I am what we call a “lifer.” I was sent to prison with a sentence of 25 to life.
When the pandemic started to spread in the prison systems, it turned my sentence and those like me with life sentences to a death row sentence. And the way this prison responded to the spread throughout the institution made it my reality. If it wasn’t for this experimental drug that the care provider here offered me that wasn’t FDA approved called bamlanivimab I would had fell victim to COVID-19.
Due to being overweight, hypertension, and with one good lung.
Due to becoming a product of the environment it left me this way from being shot through the lung and I was stabbed in the same one. So when I got COVID, it hit me harder than it did others.
I was so sick, I had to make a decision. Do I take this unapproved medication with all these side effects and have a chance to live? Or just sit here damn near dead? I said “fuck it give me the shot.”
I felt as if my back was against the wall. I didn’t have much of a choice. It feels like they wanted inmates to get the virus when you think about how they mixed buildings together. Guys that were in a building with no positive inmates, put in a building that was hot with positive inmates.
I try to keep in mind that this pandemic is new and sudden to us all. I have never felt this hopeless and powerless in my life. I pray to God to give me the strength to endure through the stress that the pandemic so abruptly caused in my day to day living.
I haven’t been able to see or touch my daughter in eight years, when I came to DVI in 2019 from San Quentin Reception around Halloween. Due to communication issues with my daughter’s mom and the fact that SEE can’t get approved, I never had the opportunity to touch, hug or kiss my baby in eight years. Every day that goes by without her in my life, kills my soul softly.
I’m dying in inside. My heart breaks at just the thought. And now the prison system try and kill me by use this pandemic as a cover. Now that I survived COVID, I’m labeled as “resolved.” Pray for me and my family, and thank you for caring.
Best wishes.
