Robbie's Memories

8.   Breaking my own rules               I have twice broken my rule about not googling patients to find out what they were in for.   One, a thin, rather scruffy looking man, during his intake physical, said “I’m a neurosurgeon.”   I thought, yeah, right buddy!   So I googled him: he was indeed a neurosurgeon!   This is a story that isn’t mine to tell, except to say that he proved to me that there was life after medicine. In retirement I have found that to be true.               The other time the inmate in question said: “That was when I won the Grammy!”   Now who could resist that line?   So I googled him and while he hadn’t won a Grammy, he had been nominated.   This was Jan Lewandowski, the Polka King.   He wasn’t making ends meet with his polka band so he started a Ponzi scheme and bilked 400 people out...

3. Another favorite patient               Even working in prison, or maybe especially, a doctor has patients that just become pets.   This one was a favorite.   I’m absolutely terrible at remembering names and have no idea at all what his name was, so I’ll just call him DW.   He had HIV and I took care of him for about 18 months before he was released the first time.               HIV treatment is a prison medical success story.   Many of these guys don’t show up for treatment on the street, so the only time they actually take their medication is when they’re incarcerated.   We get to watch their viral loads go down and their CD4 counts go up as they respond to treatment.   DW was one of those who frequently didn’t take his medication when on the street.   HIV patients have to take it regularly; they can’t afford to ...

              After a year at Delaware Correctional Center, the contract changed, and Prison Health Services, the new medical contractor, let me switch to Sussex Correctional Institution as their medical director and only physician.   SCI was 14 miles from my house; I had been driving 43 miles each way to DCC.   I was there for 9 years, with three different employers on four different contracts.               Delaware is one of two states in the US that have no county jail system.   All prisoners, pretrial or sentenced, go to one of the 10 state facilities.   So our new intakes came straight from the street, with alcohol and drug withdrawal issues.   We had a 5 or 6 (sorry, guys, it’s been a few years) bed infirmary.   One cell had 3 beds, the others had one each.   The room on the end was a suicide room with a molde...