Prison has been difficult, as it’s designed, but I’m doing my best to survive and rehabilitate myself, even if I never get out.
The emergence of COVID-19 has taken a mental, physical and emotional toll on me because our prison was placed on lockdown in March of 2020. At that time, everything ground to a halt. Visits stopped and no movement was allowed unless under escort. There were no mental health groups, education services, or chapel services. Access to the dayroom and recreational yard was limited to every 72 hours with a 10-person limit.
The COVID-19 infections started with one of the nurses at the clinic. It passed to some of the correctional officers and then down to the inmates, where it spread like wildfire. Before long, 15 inmates had died, including two inmates with whom I was acquainted. I don’t know how many more inmates passed away before the warden got desperate enough to use the gym to house those who contracted or who showed symptoms of COVID-19. I was among them.
My symptoms consisted of loss of smell, loss of taste and bones that ached all over. These symptoms persisted for about five days, but I was unwilling to just lie in bed and hope to get better.
I got up every day to exercise, run a few laps to sweat it out, then take a hot shower to top it off. By doing all that, plus following all the advised safety precautions, I beat COVID-19 in only 11 days, although I had to still stay isolated for three more days to officially finish my quarantine.
I was moved from the gym on December 26, 2020, and was told I’d receive the vaccine after being COVID-19 free for over 90 days.
In March, I finally qualified for the vaccine. The medical staff first vaccinated those who had never had COVID-19, then the officers, and now us, the COVID-cured, as we say. My first dose of the Pfizer vaccine was given on March 4, my second dose on March 21. I had little to no side effects from the shot, only mild tingling all over and sleepiness.
There are now no more COVID-19-infected inmates or staff inside this prison. San Diego is now back in the “red tier,” which means looser lockdown restrictions here. We are allowed dayroom and yard access twice a day, in-person visitations and one-on-ones with our primary care clinicians and in-person visitation.
When San Diego reaches the “orange tier,” we’ll be allowed to return to groups, go to work assignments that weren’t on the essential workers list, and mingle and mix with inmates from other units.
This lockdown and the COVID-19 battle was rough, but things are looking brighter!
Although we’re not out of the pandemic, I’m optimistic and confident we’re heading to the light from the darkness.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.