Injuries

My leg wsa broken in two different places, two different bones. I had the thing reset manually by a vicious doctor who told me only to breather as I writherd in pain, yelled, and tried to kick him away from my leg while having no feeling strong enough to outdo the pain (so as to kick him successfully).

After the original reset, the surgeons gave me the option of surgery, or not. I accepted and was taken to the OR for pins and stabilizers, which I wore for two weeks.

Well, it was supposed to be two weeks, but as one finds in the public detention center, the schedules for surgeries and such are contigent on how well things are being run that day. Just because you have a doctors appointment, doesn't mean that the thing will be kept. I knew of one guy, a bank robber, who was waiting for the lens of his eye to be surgically reattached for over a month (it was supposed to be an immediate thing). I suspected, and couldn't contain my cynicism, that the result of his gang shooting at fellow officers during the heist and getaway, that the neglect on part of the sherriff's and staff served as retaliation. Another guy is still waiting for a bullet to be removed from his hand, after many many months. I knew him for two months during which he had only one doctors appointment.

The care I can go on about. As I had also a hole puncture on my rear cheek, I needed immediate attention everytime I showered, as well as a bandage change once a day. The hole was so big that they used a wet to dry packing. This means simply that the nurse takes a strip of gauze and wets it with a solution before shoving it in my cheek's gaping hole. Over this they placed a dry bandage and tape.

Some nights the nurse would cart up at 2:30 am. This would mean that I stayed awake enough to get my bandage changed, as well as that breakfast would come in an hour to quell my hunger pangs, which usually was one of the reasons I couldn't sleep. Other nights, I'd be forgotten. Tom never forgot, that's why I liked the guy. Larry would do a good job after he and I had a fallout, but once in a while I wouldn't get service, and usually it was up to me to find out why. Negligence, a need for renewing the order (which I had no way of knowing from night to night usually), etc.

Back to the leg. I started on crutches a few days from the surgery, and finished off watching television between hits of morphine to taking vicadin for a couple hours, before getting a transfer to the infirmiry of the Bexar County Cooler where I did not have any pain killers. Sure, I had a perscription for them, but it was no use since they don't carry all kinsd of medicine there. It apparently prevents the use of illegal perscription drugs.

I eventually had a visit with the physicians assistant in the infirmiry. They didn't have doctors, and the pain I felt at the time was so great that simply moving my leg was a huge effort (imagine going to the door from the cell and getting the tray of food and carton of milk with crutches and sometimes very little desire to move, even though the rations are scarce and hunger is real) I was weighed, and my orientation to the place was that I was never orientated.

I skip past the processing, or booking, which was lengthy and with the bizarre appearance of a high school friend, who with a very different appearance (from string bean to ripped) slapping high fives to the SWAT team gearing up to leave. Apparently Arnie works for warrants.

more to come...