By Kevin Rashid Johnson
There is a literal crisis of denied and substandard treatment of prisoners’ serious health conditions in Virginia. My own experiences give testament to this.
During 2021 I returned to the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) from confinement in a series of state prison systems across the country. Since 2014 I’d been treated for chronic hypertension, which included biannual assessments of my condition by prison medical providers. Part of these assessments included blood tests.
When I returned to Virginia in latter 2021 I was given this series of blood tests, which because of my advanced age, included prostate antigen level (PSA) tests. My PSA results read extremely high, indicating likely prostate cancer. Initially the prison doctor told me of the PSA results but that it was likely a fluke and would be repeated. The repeat was done but I heard nothing else about the results.
At my next biannual assessment, the examining nurse practitioner expressed surprise to find the results of my PSA tests for that period to be extremely high, along with the results from six months prior, including the repeat test, both of which had also been abnormally high. She remarked that I should have been immediately referred to an urologist six months ago, but she would assure that I was scheduled now. This was in April 2022.
Upon seeing the urologist at the Medical College of Virginia hospital (MCV) I was immediately referred for testing, first a CAT scan which showed abnormal ”spots” on my prostate, then a biopsy which found that my prostate was indeed consumed with cancer. This cancer diagnosis was returned in July 2022. As the months progressed my condition worsened, as I developed symptoms and complications from the advancing cancer, including chronic urinary bleeding, a UTI which went untreated for over a month after its diagnosis, and so on.
Followup tests were ordered and scheduled to determine the appropriate course of cancer treatment. Prison officials repeatedly missed my appointments, resulting in my cancer treatment being repeatedly delayed and denied. It was only because of a series of public protests and publicized reports of my mistreatment that I finally received care which still didn’t begin until mid-2023, a full year and a half after prison medical providers had the PSA test results showing that I likely had cancer, and a full year after the biopsy diagnosis of prostate cancer.
As I began receiving radiation treatment at MCV’s Massey Cancer Center, I encountered numerous other Virginia prisoners who were also undergoing cancer treatment. Almost every one of them had also suffered a long period of denied and delayed care like I had, despite reporting complications from their advancing cancer which were blatantly symptomatic of cancer; symptoms that were ignored or grossly misdiagnosed by prison medical staff. Many times their conditions went undiagnosed and untreated until they suffered some resultant emergency health crisis and had to be rushed to a hospital, where it was only then found that they had cancer.
Not only did this delayed and denied cancer treatment for over a year leave me to suffer physically, but it left me, as with many others, totally distrustful of both prison and hosital medical professionals.
Subsequent to undergoing cancer treatment consisting of two months of external beam radiation, I developed side effects, along with medically acknowledged symptoms consistent with congestive heart failure. Virginia prison officials and their medical staff refused to allow me referrals, teasing or treatment for these conditions, compelling me to go on a 71 day hunger strike – from Dec 26, 2023 through Mar 5, 2024 – seeking to compel this care.
This is an example of the gross medical mistreatment suffered by Virginia prisoners, and in the case of one of the most serious and deadly of ailmemts, namely cancer. The suffering is as bad and worse in other cases of serious medical needs, like diabetes, hepatitis, cardiac conditions, etc. Every day I encounter prisoners suffering denied and substandard treatment for just such ailments. In fact I wrote a recent article on this situation following the findings of a report by the Virginia ACLU that the Virginia prison health care system is ”accountable to no one.” (1) The question is, what is to be done?
The ‘help’ that professionals can offer is to exercise their medical autonomy and authority more directly and authoritatively against the encroachments and interferences of prison officials so as to ensure and protect prisoners’ access to medical treatments. This responds to the general practice of prison officials influencing and obstructing medical personnel from providing prisoners needed and are entitled health care, often in efforts to save money. Whereas by law non-medical prison officials cannot interfere with nor deny medical treatments nor access to medical personnel, however they commonly bully medical persons from caring for prisoners. Prisoners also need medical personnel to ensure that we receive updates and followups on our medical conditions and care, and that prisons not be allowed to manipulate medical privacy laws so as to conceal a prisoners’ own medical information from her/himself and from the public when medical complaints are lodged against medical mistreatment or neglect or concerns of prisoners’ deaths caused by medical mistreatment or delayed/denied care. Prison officials routinely use these methods to not only deny us needed and entitled testing and treatment, but to cover up the resultant suffering and carnage this has caused, as exemplified in the findings of the ACLU report I cite above. Also we are not kept informed of the developments in our health conditions and proposed or planned followup care.
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!
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Endnotes:
*I was asked to give a brief analysis of my personal experiences with denied medical treatment within the Virginia prison system and practical suggestions for solutions for concerned medical professionals in training.
1. Kevin ”Rashid” Johnson, ”The Hidden Plague of Virginia Prisoners Dying from Medical Neglect” (2023) https://www.rashidmod.com/?p=3530