This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Chowchilla.
December 2020
Attention pandemic project.
To all nursing students from UC Irvine.
Thanks for thinking of us here. My name is [redacted]. Back in August 2019 I was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. I had symptoms. I would always be sleepy, my sleeping was not normal, and my whole left side would go out like in a paralyzing way.
Medical here is not good. Took them three years of my complaining, copays, falling, to walking lopsided. My left arm don’t work too good. October, I went out for a bilateral mastectomy. Now my immune system stays compromised. I live in the prison hospital alone due to my low immunity.
They have my chemo on hold due to the surge of the pandemic. I have no antibodies. I’m fighting for my life as I weakly write this letter to you.
I’m not in prison for murder of another human. I’ve been in prison since 1981 for a 211 robbery of a gold chain of a house. No weapon, no gun. Just a dumb stupid gold chain. Was it right? No, I have done over my time. And now I’m 56 with stage four cancer. Living in the prison hospital. I have been on chemo since December 2019 until now, and I still have radiation. Three weeks of that. I don’t want to die here.
They don’t treat us as a patient, they treat us like prisoners. We are human first.
Thank you.
