White Man Can't Jump

Four weeks ago I injured myself trying to box jump onto a concrete pad. I walked, rather briskly, to medical after busting my shins open to where my legs were pouring blood. 

For the first time since I have been in prison I had a positive experience with the medical care I received. The nurses were quick to provide medical care, and they did it while treating me with the respect of a human being (after they stopped laughing and joking about my clumsy attempt to jump!) I was patched up and received four stitches in one leg and had the other leg bandaged. The doctor who stitched me up onsite told me I would be called out in two weeks to medical to have my stitches removed and my wounds observed. 

I was encouraged by the treatment I received until after sixteen days I still had not been called to have my stitches removed. I sent a kite to medical asking what happened and five days later I was finally called to medical. When the nurse asked me why, three weeks later, I still had my stitches in, I told her the doctor said he'd schedule me to have them removed. The nurse's response? "Oh, and you believed him?!"

As the nurse reopened my wound so she could remove the now deeply scabbed over stitches, she asked if I had used antibiotic cream. I told her I had asked the doctor about if I should and he had told me it wasn't necessary. The nurse disagreed. 

Such is the quality of our medical care in prison. 

I am still healing and I expect I won't have a career as a leg model, or as anything that requires me to leap higher than the height of my own knees - because this white man clearly can't jump!