56, formerly imprisoned
Anna sits on the sofa in her large suburban home, surrounded by her husband’s legal papers. Her husband recently retired and is in the process of emptying his office. Anna jokes about moving all his boxes into their two-car garage when he isn’t looking. Two small, matching dogs curl up at Anna’s feet and repeatedly attempt to jump into her lap. When she begins to speak, she does so matter-of-factly, at first only relaying biographical facts—where she was born, when she got married, where she went to college. But once her husband leaves the house, she begins to talk about the effect of her drinking on her husband and two sons, her numerous arrests for drinking and driving, and how she ended up serving almost a year in prison. She describes the lack of medical care in prison for her diabetes and cirrhosis, and how her health deteroriated to the point where her heart stopped beating.
YOU CAN MAKE AN ADDICTION OUT OF ANYTHING
I’m fifty-six, born and bred in Palestine, Texas. That’s in East Texas, home of the dogwood trails. I had one divorce and then I married my current husband; we’ve been married for over twenty-five years. We went to school together, so we’d known each other for thirteen years when we got married.
Somewhere along the way, I guess alcohol became the major focus of my life. I guess you can make an addiction out of anything if you just totally give yourself over to that. For some people it may be a food addiction; it can be sex for others. For me, it was alcohol. I fought it. I wanted to be a good mom, but I didn’t feel worthy of certain things, so it was a struggle.
I didn’t drink in high school. And when I was at the University of Texas at Austin, I was too busy studying, so I didn’t have time to drink. I graduated after three years with a bachelor’s in journalism, with a specialization in communications and public relations, and after that I came two credits shy of getting my teaching certificate.
After college I met a boy. And aren’t they the root of almost all evils? I never should have married him; he pretty much broke my heart. After three years, he left me for somebody else, and that’s when I really started drinking.
After my marriage fell apart, I stayed in Houston for probably six months. I didn’t do anything, and I pretty much just lay in bed. I was depressed. I drank. And then I’d get up and just putter around the house and feel sorry for myself. Finally my mother called and said, “I know you’re depressed, but this isn’t good, this isn’t healthy. If you don’t come home, your dad and I are gonna come down there and get you.” So I just packed up and picked up some clothes and stuff, and went back to East Texas, where immediately I got back in bed. And that’s when I think the drinking really started to take a more important turn. That’s when I started to hide bottles.
For quite a while, I was able to get away with it. I’d go to the liquor store while my parents were at work, and nobody knew I was drinking. But I started to worry that I might have a drinking problem. It wasn’t the first thing I did every morning, but it was certainly the last thing I did every evening. And so I went to the doctor, and told him, “I think I have an alcohol problem.” He said, “Hell, I’d have an alcohol problem too if I was going through a divorce.” So that didn’t give me any reason to stop, and it justified everything that I needed to hear. As an alcoholic, that kind of justification is really important.
When my current husband and I got together, my drinking got worse. His father was a doctor in our town, and very well respected. But his family were drinkers. Dr. Jacobs didn’t really start drinking until he got home, and then sometimes he might just have one or two drinks. But my mother-in-law started drinking at five o’clock. They had a beautiful house with a humongous open bar. There was everything you could possibly think of, and you could mix your own anything. Just after five o’clock, we would congregate in their big house. There were always people there for dinner, enjoying the bar and the company.
I started drinking more and more, even when I wasn’t with my husband. I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it. I didn’t drink when I was pregnant, so therefore in my mind I wasn’t really an alcoholic.
After our first child, Jacob, was born, we moved to Irving. I was totally overwhelmed. I was in a place where I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t know anybody. I drank, but I’d manage to keep things together pretty well until my husband came home in the evenings. Then I would go lie down in the bedroom, and he would take care of the baby. Finally I realized it just wasn’t working. One day, I said, “I need to get a job.” We didn’t really need the money, but it was more that I just needed to get out of the house.
I found a really good school for Jacob, and I went to work at the Las Colinas Country Club. I functioned well; I didn’t drink when I was at work. It just never occurred to me to drink because I was doing something that I really enjoyed doing, putting together wedding receptions and parties. But every day, I would leave work and stop at the liquor store. I would buy vodka, and I’d drink on the way home. I’d leave the bottle in my car and then when my husband went to take a shower, I’d take my bottle out and hide it somewhere in the house.
I did that for about a year and a half. But after a while, my husband began to notice that something wasn’t right. I finally went to rehab in the late 1980s. That seemed to work for a while, but I guess I was in denial, so it didn’t work for that long a time. We moved again, and things just escalated. I began to drink and drive, and I got arrested for it several times. I’d get arrested and sent to jail, and my husband would come and bail me out. I always got arrested in Dallas County, just on the other side of the line, so nobody at my husband’s work had to know what he was living through.
I WANTED IT TO COME TO AN END
I kept thinking that another baby would save my life. So I had Henry. Once again, I didn’t drink the whole time I was pregnant, and I was thoroughly happy. I did fine; I didn’t go through any kind of post-partum depression. But then, just all of a sudden, I’d be someplace and alcohol would present itself again to me, and I would drink. I think there’s a song that says “one’s too many and a hundred ain’t enough,” you know? That’s what it was like for me.
Every six months to a year, I’d go to rehab. I’d spend twenty-eight, thirty days there, come out, be fine for a while maybe. I was what is called a functioning alcoholic, so I don’t think anybody knew, except for just my husband and two kids. I could stand and shake hands and do whatever it was that was required of me, but emotionally, I just wasn’t there. I went to my own mother’s funeral drunk, because I couldn’t bear the pain of losing her.
All this has put a humongous strain on our family. You can’t imagine what I did to my two sons. I never laid a hand on them, but I hurt them. I hurt their hearts. If there was anything I could do, I’d take all of this back in a heartbeat.
The second or third time I got a DUI, they gave me six months at Cornell Corrections of Texas, a correctional and drug treatment program. It was a goofy program, I’ll be honest. And you would’ve thought that after going someplace, and being away from your family on your son’s sixteenth birthday, after not even being able to see the car we bought him for his birthday, that I would have changed. Once Jacob got his car they would drive down to see me on Saturday mornings, but finally they decided that they just didn’t like coming, and I said, “That’s okay.”
When I got out I was on five years’ probation. I completed five years without drinking, but as soon as the five years were over, I couldn’t wait to have a drink. I started drinking again. I thought I could drink responsibly, but it just doesn’t work that way. Like I said, one’s too many and a hundred’s not enough. It really escalated. I thought I was unhappy with my marriage, I thought I was unhappy with the kids. But it really wasn’t any of that, I was just unhappy with me. And I kept saying to my husband, “I think I need some help.” My husband was willing to give me any kind of help I wanted, but he said, “You’re going to have to do what they say.”
In March 2009, he took me to a doctor, who prescribed two medications to help me go through withdrawal and, I guess, make me not crave alcohol. My husband went to pick up this prescription for me, but I was determined that I was gonna drink one more time before I started taking this medication. I’d already been drinking that day anyway, but I had run out of wine and beer. So I drove to Tom Thumb, a grocery store down the street.
Before I left, my younger son Henry said, “Mom, you don’t need to be going anywhere.” Then he said, “Mom, I’m gonna call the police.” And I said, “Yeah right, just go ahead, you call the police.” I don’t even really know what I said, but it probably wasn’t very nice.
I got in the car and I drove down to Tom Thumb. When I got there, as I started getting out of the car, I could see these two police officers sitting in their car across from me. Now at that point, anybody in their right mind would say, “I’m not going in there, and I’m not gonna drive myself back to the house. It’s not that far, I can actually walk.” But alcohol just screws up your brain. It just overtakes you. And so I went into the grocery store, and I bought two bottles of wine and some beer. I had a moment when I thought to call my husband and tell him to come get me, to just say, “Look, I’m sorry, I screwed up.” But I didn’t have a cell phone with me, and I didn’t see a pay phone. So I just thought, What the heck, you got yourself down here, you can certainly drive yourself back home.
Immediately I knew the police officers were going to come and arrest me again for a DUI, and part of me wanted them to. I wanted it to come to an end. I guess if I thought anything, I knew I’d be put in jail, but I don’t think I really thought it through. Sure enough, the officers followed me, all the way down the street, all the way down to my house.
They pulled me over up next to the median, and my husband drove by then with my son in the car. They had never seen me be arrested. They just stopped and stared at me.
Because the police officers knew me, they decided not to impound the car. One of them drove my car home and the other one handcuffed me and put me in the backseat, took me to jail, and booked me in. They gave me my phone call, and the phone just rang. I mean, the answering machine didn’t even come on. I can understand. Not only was my husband angry, he was hurt, and so was my son. My husband was trying to protect our kids.
I was feeling really bad. It took several days, and finally one of the officers said, “You know what’s wrong with you—you’re going through withdrawal.” I said, “I know. I have some medication at home that could ease this and help my bad stomach.”
He said, “You can use my phone to call someone to bring it to you.” It didn’t come up on the caller ID as the jail phone, so my husband answered. When he realized it was me, he said, “Anna, I’ve had enough. I’m not coming to get you out or anything.” He did agree to bring the medicine, but he didn’t bail me out, and honestly I don’t know if I wanted him to. I did want to come home, because I thought I could fix everything if I apologized. But I knew what kind of a mess I’d gotten myself into.
SO LONG AS I WAS JUST LAYING ON THE FLOOR, I COULD BREATHE
First I went to a tiny little jail, and the lights were on all the time. They gave me a mattress, and I slept on the floor. I couldn’t drink, and it was extremely difficult; I was just so frightened by everything. Have you ever gone to a party and drank too much and gotten dry heaves? That’s what it was like. There was no bathroom I could go to, no bucket or anything. I did everything I could not to throw up on the floor—I just hung on.
Once this officer came in, and I said to him, “I think I need to go to the hospital,” but he told me, “You’re just going through withdrawal. You’re going to stay right here.” I was there for about a week, long enough that they let me get a shower. And you know what? I think I slept for the whole week. When I left there I felt flattened, scared. But I wasn’t gagging any more.
When they got me to Dallas County Jail, they checked me in and didn’t give me anything for the withdrawal. It would’ve probably helped, but I guess I got through it okay. I was in Dallas County Jail from March 13th, 2009—it was Friday the 13th, I’ll never forget that—to June 4th. My attorney visited me. My husband visited me. He also had me served with divorce papers while I was in jail. I said, “You know, I really don’t think I can handle this right now. Before we do anything drastic, can we try to just manage to exist? Just give me some time to see where they’re gonna put me, what’s gonna happen to me.”
He said, “You’re the mother of my two kids. I’ve loved you ever since we were in ninth grade. You’ll have money in your commissary account, you’ll have all the medical attention you need.” But he did want to get divorced. He just couldn’t do it any more.
My attorney told me that I was probably looking at eleven months, but I didn’t tell my husband that. I thought that, as long as he just thinks I’m here for six to nine months, maybe we can handle that and then we can work on the marriage. And I was still trying to figure things out in my own head.
Wednesdays are big nights in the Dallas County Jail, because that’s when you find out what prison you’re being moved to. On June 4th, the guards gave us dinner at four or five in the afternoon, and then we didn’t eat again. They moved me to a cell with thirty, thirty-five other women, with only two toilets and no toilet paper. It was impossible to sleep in the cell with so many other women. I did a lot of just sitting and watching. There were black women singing hymns. There were other people just saying off-the-wall stuff. I was scared to death. I’m a talker, so I could have talked to anybody, but nobody really wanted to, so I just sat there.
We were stuck in there until they decided that they were ready to go to Plane State Jail in Dayton, Texas. When it got time, they handcuffed me to a girl named Bobby. Then they loaded us on the bus. We traveled overnight. I don’t know why. I guess they think that somebody’s going to, I don’t know, overturn the bus or something like in that movie The Fugitive. The whole time I was thinking, This is so bizarre. This is too dramatic for me.
It took about four hours to get from Dallas to Plane State. When we got off the bus I was exhausted because I hadn’t slept, so I just kind of followed Bobby. She seemed to know where she was going and what she was doing. I was feeling really weird, exhausted and not right. The worst part was the heat. The bus had air conditioning, but when we got off, the temperature outside was probably a hundred and three. As my father would say, it was hotter than blue blazes.
Plane State Jail is where they do what they call diagnostics; that’s where they go through your family and health history. The big tin building where they put us for diagnostics had no air conditioning. There weren’t even any fans in there. The building was divided into cages, and the guards put us into these, and then they’d bring us out one cage at a time to get our clothes. It was just so hot. I kept thinking, Well, surely it’s gonna get better.
I didn’t know at that point where we were going next, so you’ve got all the fear going, and it was just so hot you can’t even describe it. Finally they started taking us to our dorms. Before they moved us, they gave us a little sack with a little tiny toothbrush, a little bit of toothpaste, and a bar of lye soap. They didn’t give you shampoo; you had to use the lye soap on your hair. We also had a roll-on deodorant, a little bitty thing about travel-size. I went to what they call F Dorm, which was an overflow dorm. There were fifty-six to fifty-eight women in the dorm, in bunk beds. By the grace of God, I got a low bunk. I was fifty-four years old at this point, and extremely overweight; I weighed probably 300 pounds. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d gotten a high bunk.
F dorm was a Quonset hut.1 The prison was meant for 500 to 700 women, and there were at least 2,000 there at the time, so they had to use these Quonset huts. It only had industrial-size floor fans, and maybe a couple of ceiling fans. That first day they gave us a little paper-cone cup for water. I didn’t know to save my cup, and I threw it away after I drank the first time. It was only later when I was thirsty again that I found out that you only get the one cup. When I asked what I was supposed to drink out of, the other girls told me that I had to look in the trash for a Coke can or something.
We had showers in our little dorm area, and people started lining up just to get under the water. I was in there with a couple of heavily pregnant women, who were just miserable, because of the heat and because of their size. It was so hot we’d sprinkle water on the concrete floor and just lay down in it. So long as I was just laying on the floor, I could breathe. It was tolerable.
We’d arrived that day too late for the sack lunch, so I didn’t eat all that day. The next morning, breakfast was two to three pancakes, tons of syrup, tons of butter, some pork product. You could also get biscuits or toast. It was the same every morning. Great days were when you could have prunes.
After about three weeks, they said I could go to the commissary. I was so hungry at that point, I bought anything that was a carbohydrate. All kinds of chips. I spent some seventy odd dollars, almost all the money I was allowed to spend.
While I was there I felt really bad, but I wasn’t sure what was going on. I thought it might just be depression. Usually I’m a real Texas-type girl, you can’t beat me down. But I knew something was wrong, it just wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. Then, after three or four weeks, my feet started swelling. They were huge, especially around my ankles. They were as big as a salad plate. All the girls kept telling me that something was really wrong. I put in a medical request and saw a physician’s assistant (PA). She just said, “Get over it. Get real.” I was in there with a girl who was humongously pregnant, and she got no prenatal care at all. She just kept gaining weight, which couldn’t be good for her or the baby.
I DON’T KNOW IF ANYONE IN THERE EVER USED THE WORD “DIABETES”
I put in medical requests every two or three days. Once, the physician’s assistant (PA) did a Pap smear on me. When the results came back, she said, “You have abnormal cells.” I was freaking out, and I said, “Now what do I do?” She said, “I don’t know. Come back in about six months.” I guess she figured I probably would be moved by then, and she wouldn’t have to deal with it. By then I was terrified. I felt so bad, I just knew something was really wrong with me, and I was afraid I’d die in prison.
After a while it was so bad I couldn’t put on shoes. I’ve had two babies, and yet my feet have never swollen like that before. The swelling was even going up my leg, and the other girls kept saying, “Anna, you’ve got a problem.” I got a letter to my husband, who called them and got all my medical records. I finally saw a different PA, and she actually tried to help me. I went to her and said, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. Somebody needs to give me some help.” She looked at me and said, “Honey, let me try to get you some help.” She was really nice. By then they were fixing to put the girls in boots, but I couldn’t wear a boot because my feet were so swollen. So the PA gave me a pass for plain old tennis shoes; that had to come from her, otherwise the guards would make me wear the boots. After I gave her my medical records, she gave me a diuretic and my feet went back to normal. She also told me to come and get my blood sugar tested twice a day. I would stand in line with a bunch of girls; the ones on insulin got in first. The nurses would call “Insulin finger prick,” and I’d go in, even though I wasn’t on insulin. Then a nurse would prick my finger and my blood sugar level would come up on a computer. The number usually ran from 245 to 500. They’d show me the number and that was it. Now I know I’m supposed to be around 100 or 120. But in there, no matter what the number was, they didn’t do anything. They just pricked my finger and that was it. I don’t even know if anyone in there ever used the word “diabetes.”
Once I was sent to see a doctor. He was Asian, and his accent was really thick. I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t understand him, so I just said, “Yes, no.” That was the only doctor I ever saw at Plane State.
I’m on insulin now, but I never got any while I was in there, and no one ever told me what I should or shouldn’t eat. Now I know I’m supposed to have very limited carbohydrates, but back then I knew nothing. The thing about it is, you didn’t have a choice anyway. The PA put me on a “diabetic tray,” but no one would honor it, and I had to put in another request to go see her before I was given the special diet menu. On that menu, they would let me have some fruit and sometimes a piece of Spam or some kind of petrified pork. The only thing different at breakfast was that they’d give you pancakes with sugar-free syrup. That was about it. I’d try to do it on my own, but it was so hard. Sometimes I could’ve just killed myself because they’d have chocolate cake. When you’re stuck in a prison, just a piece of chocolate cake would feel like a pat on the back. But I’d tell myself, No, don’t eat the cake. Your body is worth more, you’re worth more than this. You’ll survive.
The thing is, in the women’s prison, they just don’t have any special food for diabetic people. Maybe they do for the men, because I spent one night in a men’s prison. I looked on their board when we went for breakfast, and they had something like three different menus to pick from for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Women don’t have that. Now, I’m not exactly a women’s libber, but if they’ve got that for men, why don’t they have it for women? And if they’re going to call it a diet menu, or a diabetic menu, why isn’t it closely monitored? Because the food where I was nearly killed me.
I’d started a job folding uniforms in the laundry. By then I was feeling just terrible, I felt so sick, but I kept going to work. Maybe it’s my age, you know, or maybe it’s the way I was raised, but if you’ve got a job, you go to it, you do it. Boy, there’d be days I didn’t feel good, but I loved going to work because it gave me someplace to be. You were out, you could talk while you folded clothes. We didn’t have a whole lot to talk about, but, you know, everybody talked about their families and what they were going to do when they got out and everything. I enjoyed that. It sounds funny, but I felt like it saved me, to have that job.
But I kept on not feeling great. When we walked to and from work we were supposed to stay between these two yellow lines. Well, sometimes my foot would just slip out and I knew I wasn’t doing too great. I was weaving when I walked, and my thought patterns got confused. My bunkmate and I would be in a conversation and all of a sudden I’d just stop. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t remember where I was, I couldn’t remember what we were talking about. Once when I was trying to write my husband, all of a sudden, my writing just went off the wall. I was so confused. And my skin was turning yellow.
The PA said they were going to have me see a liver specialist in Galveston. She said, “Honey, we don’t wanna lose you.” That scared me. I thought they were going to send me to the doctor, but one day they just put me in a room with a computer screen and a doctor talked to me on some kind of video thing for a few minutes. He said, “We’ll try to get you down here in the next few days, but we’re going to prescribe some medication now.” I said okay. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew I was sick.
Two weeks went by and I didn’t hear from anyone. I asked, but no one said anything. By then it was August and I’d been in prison for two months. I’d go in the pill line and ask, and they’d have no information. It got to where I couldn’t speak or think correctly. But I was still working in the laundry and doing everything that they asked. I was in prison under my own doing, and as long as I could keep it up, I’d keep working. But I was just getting sicker.
I DIDN’T KNOW THAT MY LIFE WAS IN DANGER
One day I went to the pill line and they said they had lactulose for me. No one talked to me about it, and I just took it. Well, that medicine kept me running to the bathroom—I’ll be honest, it was awful. And the guards would holler at me because you’re not supposed to move around that much. At the time I didn’t know what lactulose was for, but now I know that it’s a laxative that’s used to treat hepatic encephalopathy, which is toxins in your bloodstream. When you have cirrhosis, your liver doesn’t process toxins; they build up in your body and go to your brain. That’s what caused the weaving. That’s what caused the lack of thinking ability. But no one told me that then, and I didn’t even know I had cirrhosis. I didn’t know that my life was in danger.
In prison they only give you two rolls of toilet tissue every week, which is not enough. And after I took lactulose the first time and I went to the bathroom, I thought, This isn’t going to work. I’m using up all my toilet tissue. Once the prison ran out of toilet tissue, can you believe that? How was I supposed to take the medicine then? Another time I had an accident and stained my britches, and this other inmate yelled at me to get clean. She said I smelled bad and didn’t want to be near me. After that I got kind of fearful of taking lactulose because of the stigma. Also, how do you go to work every day when you keep having to run to the bathroom? I wanted to keep working. But in the laundry there was only one toilet, and you never knew if there’d be toilet tissue. I’d try to take tissue with me when I went to work but the guards would strip-search me and find it. So I cut my dosage back. I guess I had a little bit of pride.
One day I passed out, I guess from too many toxins in my body, and once I passed out I lost all control of my bowels, and my bodily fluids went out with me. I was taken by ambulance to Cleveland Regional Medical Center. My clothes were all soiled, and they had to be cut off when I got there. A nurse tried to take my blood. I have really tiny little veins, they’re real hard to find, and after three pricks, I said, “I’ve had enough.” And I’d started feeling better, so the guards just put me back in the ambulance and took me back to Plane State without seeing a doctor.
When it was time to go back, I asked for clothes. They said, “You don’t have them any more,” and I had to go back to prison wearing two hospital nightgowns, one in the front and one in the back. I guess I still smelled bad because I hadn’t been able to clean myself. At first a female guard said, “We’re not riding back with you until you’re clean.” But I couldn’t wash myself anywhere. Finally they drove me back to the prison that night. Then I had to go sit in what they called the government office until medical opened at maybe eight or nine in the morning. It was air conditioned, and I basically sat there for four or five hours, near naked and freezing. The female guard wouldn’t get near me. She told me, “You stink.” I said, “I’m sorry. There isn’t anything I can do about this. Let me get back to my dorm so I can wash.” But they wouldn’t let me.
They finally walked me over to medical. One of the nurses there said, “You can’t just be walking around here naked.” But what could I do? The nurse took my blood pressure and said I was okay, then sent me back to my dorm.
For a few days I didn’t take anything because I didn’t know what had caused any of this. No one told me anything. Finally I went back to medical and figured out from the PA that I needed to be on lactulose because of the toxins. I said, “How do I work? How do I do anything?” She didn’t have any answers. She was just medical. So I started taking it again, but then I guess I wasn’t taking as much. I thought I could cut back, because I just wanted to work.
But something mentally happened to me, which I guess was the toxins building up in my brain. I was in an upper bunk by then, and you can’t just be climbing up and down every fifteen minutes to use the bathroom after you take it. I thought I was in control by taking less. That was me being stupid. I thought I was in control of my body, but I wasn’t.
I don’t know if it was a week, maybe two weeks later, but from there things didn’t get any better. I kept asking for medical help, but the guards wouldn’t let me see a doctor. This one night, it was so hot, and I said to my bunkmate, “I don’t feel good. I’ve just got to lay down.” And I took my top sheet off my bunk and laid it on the concrete floor, and I just laid down. And then the guards came around to do a check and one of them said to me, “You have to get up on that bed.” I said, “I can’t, I can’t get up.” He said, “You’re either going to get up on that bed or I’m going to write you up.” I said, “I don’t really care what you do.”
That’s when I really cratered. I don’t remember much after that. I guess I remember going to work and coming back over the next couple of days, but one of my bunkmates said I wasn’t making any sense at all, at talking or anything. I guess I decided to take a shower, but I have no recollection of any of this. My bunkmates followed me and sat outside the shower, but I never turned the water on. They opened the curtain and found me lying there. The girls dressed me and got the guards, and then I got airlifted out.
YOU CAN EAT OR NOT EAT, WE DON’T REALLY CARE
I woke up in Galveston at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). Part of that’s a prison, and part of it’s a teaching hospital. In my records it says that I coded on the flight to the hospital. Basically, my heart stopped beating. Those helicopter paramedics saved my life. They said I’d coded because of all the toxins in my body. They said I was lucky I didn’t die.
After four or five days I was moved to Carole S. Young Medical Facility at Dickinson. This was the beginning of September. It was a medical unit, but they put me in a single cell, and I kept banging on the door saying, “I’m supposed to see medical!” But no one paid any attention to me. I never saw a doctor there either.
At that point I had begun to take insulin. I was supposed to be on a special diet, but they didn’t have one at Galveston. At breakfast one morning I asked for the special diet, and this guard looked at me and said, “You can eat or not eat, we don’t really care.” I tried to pick out what I could eat, but I mean, if you’re stuck in a situation, you can only do so much.
I had this little yellow band around my left wrist that said “fall risk” because I teetered and tottered when I walked. This one guard tried to make me work. She took me to the warden and said, “She’s worked in the laundry at Plane State, you know, she could work in the laundry here.” The warden looked at me and said, “Ma’am, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you look like a yellow Post-it note. I don’t want you working anywhere. Ma’am, you need to go lie down.”
I got two injections daily for my diabetes. But the day that I was due to go to Huntsville to be released, they didn’t know if they were going to be able to send me home because my blood sugar was at 600. And do you know what they had given me to eat that day? We were on lockdown, and when they do lockdown you get nothing but sandwiches. I had one ham sandwich and two peanut butter and jellies. The nurse was afraid to let me travel, but finally we got my blood sugar down a little, and she let me get on the bus for Huntsville.
I was released early for medical reasons, because of the diabetes, and because I was in the last stages of cirrhosis when I was at Plane State. In three months I had gone from 300 pounds to 185. That’s a loss of over 100 pounds in three months. It wasn’t right.
I don’t think anybody knows how demoralizing and how humiliating it can be to be in prison. The men get better treatment in Texas than the women do, and I don’t understand why. I understand that what I did before was wrong, but I damn nearly died in prison, and truly I don’t think anybody deserves that.
1 A Quonset hut is a prefabricated building with a long, rounded roof made of corrugated steel.