A little story about why our jail system is fucked.
Let’s go back to mid 2015, summer time. My grandmother was 64 years old at the time. She died this year (2017), around the same time that this happened two years ago. Her health background before this incident happened in 2015 wasn't the best, but nonetheless, she took medicines that kept her healthy enough to still live life comfortably. She was a type 2 diabetic and had high blood pressure. She took medicines for these things daily, multiple times a day, for years. These medicines kept her body in proper function. Her diseases required her take these medicines in this way, because it was that detrimental to her health.
Just some background, my grandmother was not a perfect person mentally, either. I believe that she had many mental health problems that went undiagnosed. She was not the best grandmother to me, nor was she the kindest person. She was one of those bitter old ladies that were so mean, she scared me as a child and teenager. She was very abusive and I know that it was because she lived a very rough life, and was abused by her own father. She never had a mother figure in her life, because her mother, my great grandmother, died when she was only 2 to cervical cancer. My grandmother had smoked marijuana since my mother was a young child, to my knowledge. She smoked it for as long as I knew her. She used it to cope with stress, I believe. She was also prescribed pain medicine, or lord tabs, as we call them. She took those for years. She had surgery on her legs in late 2013, due to her veins swelling. She had worked before that at a local fish bait company in my hometown. Her surgeon ordered her to not go back to work. At the time, it was her, my mother, myself, and my baby sister living together in my grandmother’s house. My mother worked a full time job and helped with bills, but my grandmother was the main source of income. After the surgery happened and she could not go back to work, she started to sell her pain pills as a source of money to support our family. I do not agree with this, nor do I condone it. I actually hate that my family is full of crooks and drug addicts, but I do understand why she did it, even if it resulted in a terrible consequence.
Fast forward to mid 2015, my grandmother and I were home one summer morning. My mother was at work and my sister was at her dad’s for the summer. The police came to my house that morning and arrested my grandmother. She was a part of a huge drug bust that happened in my state. All I could do that morning was silently lay in my bed and listen to what was going on. I was panicking. They ordered her to come with them and to bring her bag of medicines, all of them. As she walked out the door, she called for me. When I came out of my room, all she told me was to call my mother and tell her that she was in the county jail.
My mother and grandfather bailed her out in a day. I was a little furious about it, because had that been me, my grandmother would have ordered them to let me stay in there for longer than that to learn my lesson. My mother being soft for her as she always was, did not want her in there, so they got a bail man to help them. The day they brought my grandmother home, she was miserable. She was throwing up violently while she sat on the front porch and they had to help her in the house, because she was dizzy. She was furious at the jail, because they refused her the medicines that she needed to take at certain times of the day. They didn't let her take them at all and it made her very sick. The following days after that weren’t any better, she was so sick she couldn't get off the couch. She could hardly eat. She threw up constantly. About a week after she was released, she went to the hospital because she couldn't eat or keep any fluids down. My mother was with her during this time, missing out on work. She had worked her job for many years and had leave time, but it wasn’t paid. That took a toll on my mother’s finances and my grandmother gave her all of the money she had to help keep up the bills. At this point, I had moved out. I still lived in my town, but lived in the city instead of the outskirts. I still came to visit to make sure my mother was doing okay, because all of this stressed her out to the point that her depression hit hard. I wasn't very close to my grandmother, but I was decently close with my mother, so I kept an eye on the situation through her.
The months after went as following: Throughout the rest of 2015, 2016, and up until the day my grandmother died, she was in the hospital a total of 27 times. Medical bills were stacked high. My mom was so stressed from trying to pay them all. My grandmother developed congestive heart failure, pneumonia, a blood infection, and her organs eventually began to shut down. She suffered 4 heart attacks and the last one is what took her life. She died in a hospital bed with my mother sitting beside her. One minute she was talking and the next she was gone.
I was the only one who ever thought of the jail system. I was the only one who said, “Her health didn't spiral until she was refused her medication”. My mother and rest of family agreed with me. Many people ask me why my family didn't sue the county jail. Well, to sue the government, you have to have money at least, which my family didn't have. We were hardly a part of the middle class before all of this happened and this incident made us even more poor, so that wasn't an option.
The jail system is what caused this to happen and it pisses me off. They should let people have their life saving medications and not refuse them as a punishment. My grandmother may have deserved to get arrested, but it shouldn't have cost her life or that much stress. And that my friends, is why the jail system is fucked, because it is going to keep doing this horrible shit to people who do not deserve it. It is just another way that the government has caused yet another blow to people who can hardly get by.
