This story was told by a person incarcerated at Chowchilla.
UCI: What has the COVID situation been like at your facility?
Caller: Oh, well, I have problems breathing any – anyway, but the – but the pandemic, it really – it really has me – had me where I can’t breathe and I’m – and I’m afraid and – and just a whole bunch of stuff, you know? Like they always tell me, Imma die if I don’t go to the hospital.
And the hospitals don’t, they – they don’t treat our medical like they do like – like if you wasn’t in prison. Like it’s hard for me to explain, but they don’t – they don’t treat inmates right, and most of the time, when some of us go there, we don’t come back. We die.
UCI: I’m so sorry to hear that.
Caller: Yeah, and one time – and – and this was, I think, is important. I was at the hospital, and I’m an asthmatic. They turned my stuff all the way up to – to eight units, and I could only have two units at a time or – or if I can’t really breathe, you know, they can go up a little bit, you know, just for a little while. But not – but not for long length of time.
I felt like my heart was about to bust. And when I told them about it, they sent me back with – okay, I went in on – with – in the ambulance, but when I was – when they sent me back, they sent me back on the bus. So there I was, breathing with an oxygen machine less than 70 something percent. So – so of course I’m not going to never want to go to the hospital no more, you know, after that there because I could have been killed.
UCI: Mm-hmm.
Caller: So just – and then later on – later on, they found out that I had pneumonia. And then, a couple times, I had pneumonia and the flu at the same time, and they put me up in the room where somebody who had the COVID had just left. So all of that is scary. Very, very scary.
So that’s why when I get real sick now, I don’t go to the hospital. But – but they – they kind of agitate me when they telling – when they tell me, if you don’t go to the hospital, you going to die. So I just take my chances right here.
UCI: Mm-hmm.
Caller: So, because at least I know ain’t nothing going to be turned up – up on me where I can’t speak. And if I speak, I might get – I get – I get, you know, sent back up on that bus, things like that is scary. And then, plus, we isolated all the time. For years we’ve been isolated. And – and not only is we isolated, like I’m – I’m allergic to mold.
We got mold all up in the prison, so I’m always having an infection or – or mold in my system. So – so to me, that means, you know, I got paperwork that says that to me, that means I’m breathing in mold from somewhere.
UCI: Mm-hmm.
Caller: Because I’m always – every – every month I can’t breathe. It takes – it take them about a week to get me breathing okay, and then – and then I – I breathe okay for, like, about three weeks, and then there I’m back in that same place again, and then it have to be a whole another month before I be seen.
