In the fall of 2017, I began a 78-month sentence at a low security federal prison. I was 67 years old and in good shape. Outside, I took regular yoga classes and avoided junk food. I attempted to maintain these habits in prison by taking long walks around the track and keeping up with yoga. 

But by the time my sentence ended, I couldn’t walk out of prison. I ended up in a wheelchair. 

It started during the pandemic

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, my unit managed to avoid the sickness until a group of infected people was transferred into our prison. Soon after, nearly everyone in the building had the virus, including me. My symptoms were mild: a nagging cough and post-nasal drip. Two weeks after I cleared the infection the same symptoms returned. My test was once again positive. 

Within a month of my second positive test, I noticed numbness in both feet. By December, the now-severe numbness spread upward to both legs. Getting around was nearly impossible. By the time I made it back from meals, I was staggering. 

After submitting a written request to see the doctor, I was given a standard walker. With no wheels, it had to be lifted up each time I took a step.

Going to commissary was the worst. Once a week, staff called out names. Each person had about a minute to make his way to the indoor window and collect his order. With the primitive walker, I couldn’t hustle down there in time to purchase what I needed. 

Many of the guards were incredibly cruel. Once, when I had to lift the walker a little to get through a tight spot, one of them said, “If you can do that, then you don’t need the walker.” They threatened to have it taken away and would move it away from me during visits and refused to bring it back once visitation ended. 

Eventually, I asked the doctor at my facility for a wheelchair. He said I would have to put in a written request on an official form. I did that. It was denied via a one-page typed response that I received at mail call. It was signed by a staff member I’d never met. The response claimed I was getting “appropriate care.”

Scans show bigger problem

In March 2021, I asked the facility’s physician assistant for a neurology consult. About a month later, I saw the visiting neurologist. Notably, he never asked to watch me walk. He made no diagnosis and wrote in my file that his impression was “lower extremity weakness, possible peripheral neuropathy.”  

Seven months later, I struggled with my clumsy walker to get to medical. I asked to be sent to the nearest emergency room for an MRI. The prison doctor ordered the MRI, but only of the lumbar spine, which indicated no abnormal findings. 

Six months later, the neurologist had another MRI done, this time of my entire spine. A lesion was detected in my thoracic spinal cord, in my chest. 

I read the radiologist’s report. He thought that this could be cancer. I tried not to assume that this would be my final diagnosis. 

When I got my diagnosis

I told my doctor I wanted a visit to a neurosurgeon and got one. On my appointment day, the guards shackled my ankles and handcuffed me and made me walk (without a walker) to an SUV with a high step into the vehicle. I was barely able to board the back seat. 

The guards drove to a nearby town but couldn’t find the surgeon’s office. Instead of phoning the surgeon’s office and asking for directions, they turned around and took me back to the prison.  

Back at the facility, a beefy guard walked alongside me. I had no walker. My remaining strength slowly left. I told the guard I couldn’t make it the remaining 300 feet to my unit. He ordered me to keep walking.

I could go no farther and asked for a lieutenant. The man who came to talk with me was unusually merciful. He had someone come to my aid with a golf cart to drive me to medical. From there, I was taken by ambulance to a hospital.

At the hospital, another MRI was performed. The results indicated I didn’t have cancer; I had an extremely rare malformation in my spine. A fistula had formed, connecting an artery and a vein in the lining surrounding my spinal cord. The fistula leaked blood, which built up over time and put pressure on the cord, damaging many of the neurons that carry signals from my brain to the lower half of my body.

Trying to get back on my feet

Two days later I underwent surgery, shackled to a bed. The operation went well, but I had a lot of pain. The attending internist tried to discharge me on my third day post-op. I wouldn’t have been able to function in prison, and luckily I was able to talk him out of that.

Every day, two physical therapists showed up to see how far I could walk. Even though I never made it 200 feet, I was scheduled for discharge after two weeks. The unit manager from my facility drove out to “visit” me. I asked him to arrange a wheelchair for me. Back at the prison, I struggled, barefoot and wearing only a thin hospital gown in the winter, to return to my unit. The khaki prison uniform and shoes I’d worn to the hospital had been misplaced.

I wasted no time filing a request to be transferred to another federal prison where physical therapy was available. My request was denied, again with the claim that I was getting appropriate care. 

Almost one year after my surgery, I left prison for a halfway house in Boston. These days, I am still living in Massachusetts, finally getting physical therapy, and slowly making progress. Having a medical condition like this while in prison was a horrible experience, and much worse than it needed to be.