COVID-19

For about the past year we have all experienced the pandemic in some sort of way, either through quarantine, isolation, bubbles, sickness, and some have had to watch from the sidelines as their loved ones passed away from COVID. But the key thread to all of this is being alone for the most part through this whole pandemic, which may or may not have a light near the end of the tunnel.

I’ve watched the news and other programs describing how this pandemic is affecting people, especially with being isolated, feelings of helplessness, and watching those who we love and care about pass away alone in a room with nobody to see except maybe a nurse if they are lucky. You see the nurses on TV always speak with such sadness and empathy concerning their patients while they describe their patients’ battle with COVID and also the loss after succumbing to COVID.

While observing all this through the media, I was struck with the irony of how things were going out there to how things in here are. Although I wonder where the empathetic nurses are in here. In prison, one nearly always dies alone unless the prison has a hospice program, which I am a part of – a proud part of, that is – as dying in prison is bad, but dying alone in prison is even worse; and seeing how the outside world has such deep emotions of people dying alone, in here, it is just like another day where nobody even bats an eye.

Maybe the answer is in the health care, since it is my belief that most of the nurses here are not of the empathetic nature. Don’t get me wrong, there are some fabulous nurses and nurse practitioners here who do their very best. However, because our medical provider is a money making entity, they limit their resources to help us and provide adequate medical care due to medical care costs. If it is a company striving to make money, they are not going to spend money if they can find a way around it.

During the time some of my friends on the outside had become infected with COVID and required hospitalization, they received all types of medication and mineral supplements. However, if you became infected with COVID here, you were isolated and made to suffer it out because treatment costs money they were not willing to spend because we are less then human beings, we are lowly prisoners, in at least that is how we are perceived.

I lost a lot of friends during the infection time here, which has now calmed down, but how many could have been saved had there been a medical provider willing to provide adequate medical services? Even without COVID, I just lost a friend to a severe heart attack after complaining for almost a week of chest pains. He was never sent to a nurse practitioner, or a doctor. He was seen by a nurse who is not qualified to do any assessment of health, only aide in what is prescribed. The nurse kept telling him it was asthma. He died on the way to the hospital of a heart attack after five days of complaining about his chest pains. He did 23 years and was four months off going home.

So, for all those who had a hard time being isolated, felt the mental pressures of quarantine, watched and heard of loved ones passing away alone in a room, that is prison life every single day without a pandemic. It was ironic to see people breaking down, yet we are the ones who are deemed undesirable and less than human because we are here, but we survive with closed mouths and ironed out struggles within because we have no real choice. Now everyone can get a taste of what prison is like and get a taste of what it takes to survive mentally in here.

Tom Odle