but the point is that if infections are caught EARLY they do not need to turn into sepsis. And unfortunately, what often happens, whether it is in federal or state prisons or county jails, "medical" (and I use the term loosely) staff is so dismissive of prisoners' complaints that simple infections are allowed to go to the point where they turn deadly and the prisoner becomes septic. That's my whole point here.
I will resurrect, at least in part, the story of my patient "Ricky", a prisoner I cared for during one of my travel assignments. Ricky was a very sick man indee by the time I got him. He'd just come out of 48 hours in ICU following emergency surgery to remove most of his colon. When I got to a place where I could sit down that night and read his medical history and surgical report, I was as angry as the doctors who had written them. He'd been complaining to prison medical staff for several months of abdominal pain, but his complaints were routinely ignored or dismissed as "malingering". He was given mdication for "constipation" at one point, which was not his problem, as he'd plainly stated, but never mind. Finally he was found unconscious on the floor of his cell bleeding profusely from his rectum with a very low blood pressure and only then was he transferred to the hospital. When the surgeon opened him up, he found that not oly had Ricky's bowel perforated, much of his colon was not salvageable and had to be removed. Ricky would have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. He was very polite and as pleasant as anyone could be who was really sick and in pain, and I took as good care of him as I would of anyone. (I wish I could have said the same for his guards, but that's a whole other story; suffice it to say I had to tell them to be quiet and turn the lights down for my patient's sake.) But that, and a few other cases I saw, are how prison medical neglect became such a hot button issue for me.
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