(This blog was originally posted by tgdindenmark1, 26 June, 2014)
A is for: Got Tuberculosis??
“The next few days of my stay among Texas’ finest were nothing of the spectacular nature. I was made responsible, as all inmates are, to adhere to the rules, to clean, and to participate, cooperate and complete the tasks of court appearance, as well as medical examination. I have never understood why it is necessary to awake inmates at 6:00 hours for medical examination, only to realize that one is not going to see the medical staff until 9:00 hours...it isn’t as if a luxury problem such as a morning pedicure appointment would be compromised if woken up later, if you know what I mean. Anyway, once rushed out of the pod, the period between the hours of 6:15 and 9:00 is mostly spent in a holding cell, and predicted to be, simultaneously, yet another test of my patience. Whereas most jails in America are required to provide a TB skin test to assure the absence of tuberculosis, Texas County Jail proved, also simultaneously, to be of no exception. As I have stated earlier, I have worked in the medical sector; and as it is required for all personnel to be vaccinated against various diseases, therefore, a one-time BCG vaccine was given to me long ago, along with the other countless vaccines. I explained this to a staff member of the medical unit in charge of screening the new female inmates for anything from mental illness to pregnancy, as such a vaccine may produce a false positive TB skin test result. As a result, I was not given the regular TB skin test; rather I was ‘privileged’ (please read the sarcasm here) to wait for what seemed hours until someone had time to perform a chest x-ray, in order to rule out any tuberculosis present... only to find out later that I was to repeat the performance of chest x-rays again in the next jail to come…and yet again, the same medical procedure of performing an x-ray of my lungs was conducted at the immigration detention centre...whereas I found it necessary, at that point, to object the need to undergo the third chest x-ray examination in less than a month! I was at the time of objecting to immigration detention medical staff , informed that the various detention centres
across the nation are operated independently, and therefore have no ability to request medical records of the detainee from other jails previously detained. I had, therefore, no other option than to bite my lip and agree to the third and last chest x-ray. If I was to draw anything positive out of that experience, it is the fact that, without any doubt was it established (three times!) within 45 days that I, in fact, do not have tuberculosis, as the collage of x-rays so clearly prove.
I understand that TB screening is important, and should be prioritized in jails and prisons. But, there are other diseases to be equally concerned with. In two of the many jails I visited, I was reminded of this fact. While having conversations with a couple of inmates on different occasions, I stumbled for words in the very moment I looked into their eyes, and was met by kind eyes, though with a slight yellowish tint. Without saying anything to either of the inmates about is, and without judgment, I wondered if they ever had the opportunity to be tested for any form of hepatitis; and if not, were these individuals ever informed at any point in their life that should such yellow tint in trade of the whiteness of their eyes, it would most likely be an indication of something abnormal in which one should to seek medical attention? Again, as I have received vaccinations for the protection against hepatitis, I was not at least worried about contracting anything at the jail, but my heart was again bleeding, while being reminded of how many people in the United States of America are not given the a basic human right such as receiving proper medical care when needed most. The prevalence of increased cases of hepatitis as well as HIV in the population of jails and prisons, as opposed to the general population, is an issue of great concern . Center for Disease Control states on its website:
“The correctional setting is often the first place incarcerated men and women are diagnosed with
HIV and provided treatment. These settings are ideal for reaching persons who have HIV, other
STIs, TB, and viral hepatitis, as well as for providing at least initial treatment and care for persons with these infections. They also offer an opportunity to provide risk-reduction interventions that help prevent infection among those at highest risk. Yet, correctional staff and health care providers in jails and prisons frequently confront challenges related to implementing testing, treatment, and prevention programs in these facilities; and providing effective linkages to care and support services that sustain clinical benefits for prisoners after their release.”
Even though I stood safeguarded against the contraction of hepatitis due to the vaccinations, as well as the previous random testing for HIV had me cleared, I have to say that I was dumbfounded, that despite being tested so many times for tuberculosis, the option to be tested for hepatitis, or even HIV was never given to me, and I am therefore concerned that these tests were, most likely, not readily available to the other 6000 inmates in Dallas County Jail, nor to the inmates of the other jails to come.
(More information here: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/other/correctional.html) And as I soon found out, the ones infected with HIV were among us in the pod. Some of them did not make it a secret. Regretfully so, other inmates did not make the conditions of infected inmates a secret either. I have always wondered how inmates can judge one another, whether it be medical conditions, pending charges of which landed the person in jail, or one’s skin colour. No matter the reason of incarceration, everyone is, after all, wearing the same dreadful jail attire as everybody else, sleeping on the same uncomfortable bunks, eating the same rather uneatable food; having to shower in the same humiliating way, while in plain view of others, as there are sometimes no doors, thus no privacy…as it goes for relieving one’s bodily waste, as well. The overall experience is utterly humiliating, degrading...sub-human. One could argue that the conditions are unacceptable in a nation such as America, and for persons found to be innocent after all, to have had to live under these conditions, even if only momentarily, is incomprehensible. As I came to find out later, the conditions in which the average American alleged criminal has to live under, the conditions for ICE detainees are equally humiliating; the irony is, that the violation of U.S immigration laws, to which the undocumented aliens are accused of, are of civil nature, and not criminal. But we will get back to that later…”
B is for: The day when honesty became priceless!
“Unlike others whom judged the inmates known to be infected with HIV/AIDS, I befriended one of
them; or, perhaps it was the other way. A delicate woman of stature, and frail due to the contraction of the disease, showed her kindness through the offering of coffee, a commodity which inmates have to purchase from the commisary, and which is one of the things regarded equal to that of gold inside of a jail. On one of the occasions where we were allowed outside in the courtyard, the woman opened up about her drug addiction. Looking at my arm, she asked: ‘Looks like you used to slam it, too, huh?’ In other words, she asked if I also was a drug user? The question left me in a state of confusion as I had forgotten about the scars found in the creases of my arms, one scar larger on the crease of my left arm rather than the right. It put my memory wandering through the mental collage of memoirs: The scars on my arms which the frail woman recognized derive from a very different reason. From the time of my life where I traded a life of comfort as stated in an earlier blog, wherefore no longer living in a half million dollar home in a gated community, no longer flaunting the lifestyle while running errands, picking up and dropping off children, or driving to meet friends for lunches in the Lexus RX (a far cry from the Purple Grand Am!), the weekend trips, the corporate retreats, and the flights around the world to attend family events...no more scuba diving, no more deep sea fishing; and gone were the days of cocktails with pretty paper umbrellas by the pool. In return, I started to live a life on meager wages like so many other non-Americans as well as your average American, I found out how these people, living on hourly wages of eight dollars an hour, and some working for even less than that, sometimes with little mouths to feed, had to find creative, but legal ways to supplement their income. Across the American nation, men and women stream to local plasma centres in order to sell themselves, a little bit at a time in form of filling bags of plasma used to make life-saving medicine in which there is no synthetic substitute; in return they receive cash, usually twenty-five dollars a session. As it is allowed to donate plasma twice a week, an extra 200 dollars a month (tax-free) is added to their humble wages, an amount which can make a big difference to a family whether they can meet their financial obligations. So, I decided to do the same…only to find out that selling one’s plasma and platelets can come at a high price to the donor. The medical field depends on these donations as equally as the donors depend on the cash, as the plasma is used to produce life-sustaining medication for burn victims as well as vital medication for other patients. As noble as it may be to donate time and vital parts of one’s body, there is nothing altruistic about the trade- it is pure business for the poor…and for the pharmaceutical companies.
So many times I sat in a room full of donors, waiting for my turn to be placed in a reclined chair. With a rolled up sleeve and a rubber tube around my biceps, and while breathing slowly, the size16 gage needle would soon penetrate the skin in the crease of my arm, drawing my blood in order to separate the plasma from the blood, only to return my blood with far less platelets and with whole lot of the anticoagulation fluids mixed into the returned blood. While sitting in the waiting area, one has the ability to observe the part of America for which the upper class society is oblivious to, and the politicians seem to have ‘forgotten’ about. I say this because, the 12 month period for which I donated plasma twice a week, I did not see any recognizable officials, nor local celebrities sitting among the average hard working American and immigrants; the waiting area absent expensive Gucci loafers, and Blackberrys (pre-iPad era), absent the Kate Spade handbag-toting female executives. Instead, there were plenty of worn out cheap sneakers, and plastic bags in lieu of designer purses, and expensive soles. The view of the crowd clearly reaffirmed my suspicion, that the medication produced from the donation was deriving from the poor and destitute rather than from the altruistic yuppie from the eighties, now all grown up and willing to give back to the society from which they had cashed in and built up a comfortable life during the last thirty years. What the view from the waiting room also reflected was the heartbreaking sight of seeing destitute persons turned away from the counter of the reception area due to testing positive from one of the many transmissible diseases to which everyone is screened for, in order to be allowed to donate; or, for yet another reason, for example, the protein in the blood testing below the standard requirement level of being eligible to donate. As I had watched some being turned away this way, I found myself one day in this very same situation. My protein level in the blood sunk below the required level too many times, despite eating can after can of tuna to increase such protein level in my blood; my weight had rapidly fallen close to the level from where someone my height was not allowed to donate. My name was therefore put on the ‘do not return for donation’ list.
This story is the story of many, as it is the normal way of living for so many Americans. It is the kind of reality for which I live and thrive to expose. It is the kind of exposure some loathe. It is the type of information unknown to some, yet many question, but sadly enough most will never sacrifice even one day to challenge the validity. It is the story meant for the one whom is willing to react followed by willing to change the words on the page.
While sitting there in the courtyard that day, I wondered how I was to explain my scars on the arms to the petite woman whom had asked. I thought that it would probably better that I kept the story to myself...not out of ignorance, but out of fear that the story would appear to be told out of a sense of superiority. So, I told a lie instead. ‘Sure,’ was my reply to her question, and figured that I was not responsible for the way she may interpret my reply.
I have come to despise drugs of any sort throughout time. The more I learn, the more I despise all of them. In other words: I judge all drugs without prejudice, as I truly hate all of them. That, however, doesn’t mean that I have prejudice against the ones fallen victim to addiction. Quite the contrary, actually. The woman in the courtyard that day, as well as all the others incarcerated for drug related charges, may have worn their scars for the world to see; the discolouring of the skin, the track marks from the needles, the decay of the teeth. Every scar telling a story of loss, and of pain; a story of disappointment, of mistaken pleasure and of kindness taken away and replaced by wickedness of the unknowing, the unaccepting of the addict. What I can say about these addicts: no matter how unaccepted by society they may have felt , it hadn’t robbed them of their soul, as many showed kindness toward me, which I will never forget. As said earlier, the coffee which was offered from someone whom appeared to have so little; the offering of toiletries bought through commisary, far superior to the shampoo and soap given in the indigent packet were offered in abundance despite the fact that I had nothing to give in return. As for the woman asking me the question that day, I learned something which I could not have learned from any text book of the elite schools: when I asked whether she was entering a program in order to deal with her drug addiction, she answered: ‘I am not going to waste anyone’s time or money trying to rehabilitate my addiction and save myself from me. That ship sailed long time ago.’ She continued: ‘I am a drug addict, but at least I am an honest one; I don’t try to change my ways in order to please someone else for what they think I should be, so, no...I won’t agree to go rehab in order to please the judge; I will carry out my sentence and move on.’ What I learned that day was that a person can acquire a wall of trophies in form of diplomas and set himself apart from the common man. But, it took an addict to teach me about brutal honesty. For all the men and women whom I know with walls glistening from the reflection of the sun upon the glass of the framed diplomas, not one of them can I categorize as a truly honest person. She had acquired something which even the most educated person isn’t guaranteed to achieve in his lifetime despite thousands of dollars and countless hours spent on the road to academia. She had acquired something priceless; and if she had nothing else to give her children, then at least she had that one thing to pass on to them, which most will never claim to give or to be given. An honest person is hard to come by in our world these days. In a ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality society, but after meeting her, I can truly say, that I have met one honest woman in my lifetime. That, in itself is invaluable to me, as her honesty will henceforth be put on the vector while measuring honesty of others on the scale of life.”
C is for: Hurry up and wait!
“If the time wasn’t spent waiting in a holding cell only to wait again to be escorted to either the medical unit or to appear in front of a judge…only to find oneself waiting yet again for a staff member to call your name in order to wait a little longer for a guard to reappear in order to be escorted back to the holding cell, once whatever the business you were waiting for to be taken care of was indeed finished (for now)...and then wait, again, in the holding cell for countless hours until a guard came to escort you back to the pod…while he/she waited along with you while another guard decided it was time to open the door; then time was thereafter spent waiting for meal times, and,which usually resulted in waiting for shake-down of all the beds after the meal while the guard went hunting for ‘contraband’, due to some of the inmates’ inability to understand that there were , in fact, rules about the beds being used for sleeping only, and not for the hiding place of hoarded food from the meal-times! Then there was the waiting for the time in which you were allowed to use the showers, or, waiting in line to ask the guard for toilet paper, grievens’ notes (which, in return, you would wait for days to receive a reply), or you would be waiting to receive a razor (which you also stood in line, waiting, to sign up for prior to receiving such razor), while then utilizing the received razor quickly while in the shower which you had waited for permission to use...only to have the guard wait for you to return the razor so she [the guard] could write in her status report that no one was hurt or attempted to be hurt by the razor, and doing so only after you had waited in line to return it to her. In other words: practicing the art of patience through the practice of waiting is exercised in jail…a lot!
Scattered around the main area were round tables with chairs, used by the inmates for everything from eating meals (which we all waited for in a long line to receive), playing cards (after waiting for someone else to no longer using the deck of cards) , reading (usually, after waiting for a book to become available, or waiting for the piece of a book, as someone, clearly sick and tired of the ‘waiting game’ and come up with the idea that the books could be torn into segments, and be read by many, followed by passing on the segment to the next reader-in-waiting), braiding each other’s hair in every way imaginable; There was the writing of letters, asking and pleading their case to families, to courts, and to the court’s judges- as well as asking, pleading and grieving to the jail’s warden about everything between the heavens and earths of the large detention centre. I cannot remember when I sat down to write a letter, pre-computer era. The thought of using a pencil and paper seemed so foreign to me. As everyone else, I was also given two envelopes and two pieces of paper in the indigent packet. At one point I looked at the paper, thinking it would be a shame for the paper to go to waste. I changed my mind when thoughts of what would happen if my feelings of this place, written in the midst of despair, and with much anticipated negativity would be put permanently on the record- then to subsequently realize that someone out there would now have evidence of the negative ramble...on paper! So, with no available ‘delete’ button attached to the paper, no words would be written. So I gave the paper away along with the envelopes, to another inmate.
While waiting in detention for the day of freedom to come near, there was also the option of viewing various soap operas, but also People’s Court (!) seemed to be a popular choice of entertainment, as well as The Jerry Springer Show (?!?) on one of the giant ‘Texas style’ televisions; and on the other equally big television screen one could usually watch all sorts of soap operas… in Spanish. If you wanted to rid yourself of friends, as I found out, then all you had to do was to request the channel changed, in the middle of a showing of The Voice, to the CNN news channel.”
D is for: The day which came...and went!
“On the 21st of September, the day of my daughter’s wedding, I sat, much like any other day, around one of these tables. And as the reality hit me, like a fist to my face, that I was going to spend this special day with inmates rather than wedding guests, and eating watered down green jell-o, instead of sampling the savory wedding cakes from my son-in-law’s bakery, I found myself in a particular foul mood. I hit the low-point that day when in front of me on the table I was faced with 50 shades of grey- and, no...I am not talking about the book! . No, I am talking about the bologna meat in front of me on the lunch tray. Never did I realize that bologna could come in so many different shades of unhealthiness. As I had done all of the previous days, I passed on the bologna and all of the many slices of white Wonder Bread (mind you, there is nothing ‘wonderous’ about this carbohydrate canon ball of bread!) along to one of the other inmates; in return, she smiled with gratitude, a smile so big that I was able to catch my own reflection in the gold grillz inside her mouth...not even that, on this day, was not going to put me in a good mood. I finally reached the ultimate low-point, as I sat at the table, listening to an inmate’s story about how she was arrested. “Oh, do go on!” I thought to myself: ‘I find it so, SO exhilarating to listen to the story about how you were caught by the Walmart security guards after you tried to steal not just one, but fourteen bottles of perfume while strung out on crack cocaine…No, really-please go on!’ I left the table, and returned the lunch tray after it had been picked to the bone by the other inmates. Then I went to my bed, where I remained for the rest of the wedding day…”
E is for: Do you speak HOODZ???
“Now that the anticipation of a miracle to happen so that I could attend the wedding was gone, I spent the remaining days in the same way as before-in other words, I did a lot of waiting for mundane highlights of the day; I moved, on several occasions, to other bunk beds, conveniently enough, by the request from the guard whom loathed me so, and conveniently to the series of beds whom were in charge of cleaning the pod for that day. I was therefore kept busy as the regular Cinderella of the pod, wiping tables, scrubbing showers and mopping floors. I also spent time trying to dicipher a language I was not familiar with: HOODZ! Although I have listened to plenty of rap music starting all the way back from the time the soundtrack of Colors came out in 1998, I had been completely naive to the fact that the language used in rap songs was also a spoken language. And adding a Texan accent to the HOODZ language left this Dane utterly confused more than once, much in the same sense as the time when I was trying so hard to recognize any familiar words during a Chinese conversation... only to find out that I was listening to Cantonese rather than Mandarin which I was becoming familiar with! Yes, it was an ‘epic fail’ moment, as my son so eloquently would have put it. In good humour, a little gang of inmates came to the conclusion that, no matter how much I tried, the ‘Denmark’ (as I was referred to) would never blend in as a ‘gangzta’. Neither would I blend in with the pod population when it came to singing. Regardless of their crimes, it can be said that some of these women had voices which, if heard by music label scouts, could acquire much more fame than what their ‘mug shots’ seeped out to the internet ever would! It was during a moment while waiting for the lights to be turned off, and while the pod population was singing, well, while waiting to be ordered to sleep, in which I found myself in a complete state of anxiety, whereas I am, ordinarily, NOT an anxious person: Despite all of the horrors of jail, nothing had caused a terrifying state of emotion such as this; Usually when the inmates took turn entertaining each other through singing, there had never been un-solicitated requests for solo singing. Even though I have on a few occasions sung my heart out to the tunes from my Spotify collection, most likely to the dismay of my neighbors, I don’t have the voice nor the courage to sing in front of a crowd! I slowly pulled the blanket closer to my face as if covering myself would make me invisible to the one looking for the next ‘Pod Idol’, I felt my limbs go numb, and the color of my face faded quickly through all the shades of grey…ending up looking as unhealthy as the grey bologna. What would I sing if ‘Denmark’ was requested to sing? Rasmus Sebach’s Natteravn? Probably not, as the only part of the song I could recite was the repetition of the “uh hoo hoo…hoo hoo” of the song. So, imitating Rasmus was ruled out. To my relief, I was not asked. It could very well have been because of the magic of the covering up by the blanket…or, the fact, that I was white and was stereotyped and ruled out as a natural born song-bird.”
F is for: The other day which came...and went on forever on end!
“Finally came the day. The last day and deadline for the state of Wyoming to extradite me to their state so I could face the court and the charges against me, and exercise the freedom of defending myself, through a very expensive attorney. If I wasn’t picked up that day, by law, the state of Texas had to release me. Fate took the path of the first of the two possibilities. I was handed over to a private contracting agency in charge of transporting me to Wyoming…of course, after waiting countless hours in a holding cell for street clothes. Thereafter it was time to wait for the signing of the release papers, checking all the content of personal items, such as British, Danish and American currencies in my wallet, my pearl earrings, credit cards and baggage claim tickets. And after an argument about the reassurance that my passport as well as my American driver’s licence was indeed in the possession of the new agent in charge, followed by a warning by the agent not to start any trouble unless I wanted to get hurt, I was once again found myself up against a wall during yet another patdown. After the pencil hiding in my hair, serving as a pin to hold my hair in a french-twist was removed, and by thereafter receiving a warning to never involving jail pencils into my beauty routine ever again, I was ready to have the cold steel of the shackles clutch my ankles. I turned around and met the cold stare of the alpha-female now in charge of my destiny. She reassured her status again when she snapped the handcuffs on my wrists…extra tight. A mental note to myself regarding ‘handcuffing as excessive force’, and followed dutifully in the direction of the car which I thought was going to transport me to the airport in order to fly to the next destination. Except, I wasn’t flying anywhere. Instead, I found out that for the next seventeen hours I would be transported, handcuffed and shackled, through four states in the vehicle I now was shoved into…”
TO BE CONTINUED...
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