My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Part of series about life in Lewisburg Federal Prison, Pennsylvania. Written by Sean Ahern, an inmate.

They’re called “cluster headaches” and he had been diagnosed by a neurologist on the street. I, myself, was convinced that the headaches were real…many a night I was kept awake by whimpering coming from the bottom bunk. It didn’t matter what I thought though. The people who weren’t convinced were the medical staff.

The cellmate was in the process of suing the medical department for what’s called “deliberate indifference.” That means they don’t give a fuck. It seemed like a real slam dunk of a case, because, of course, they didn’t. They think like they’re told to think: you’re a scumbag junkie trying to get high. Who cares what your new rah lo gist says? You get nothing. Break your leg? Here’s an aspirin and a staph infection. Fuck you.

Hell, just last year some guy choked his cell mate to death; or damn close to it. He was hanging on to one last breath but when the nurses showed up they were more concerned with spraying him with tear gas because he wouldn’t get up. This is the dead guy I’m talking about.

So one day while my cellie is considering waterboarding to put out the fire in his head, he gets some legal mail. A big stack of it. It was his “discovery”, the papers with information on everyone you’re sueing. A lot of foreigners worked here so there were little jokes. Like you’d ask to “see the Doctor” to a physicians assistant and they’d get indignant and say “I am a doctor!” Then you’d say “No, you’re a P.A. I want to see the doctor.” Sometimes he’d scream for the cops to take you away and sometimes you could drop the punchline ‘ “In my country I’m an astronaut. I’ve been to Uranus.” Even funnier that he didn’t get the joke. Quality care.

One of the doctors was arrested for stealing narcotics from the prison pharmacy and selling them through his “private practice.” There were hypodermic syringes missing, the pill counts were low. People who were prescribed certain medications were given something similar, or nothing at all. People were complaining, having reactions, and the doctor was nowhere to be found when the FBI came to speak with him.