Ursula Powell – Women’s Huron Valley

topics: mental health, medication, severe COVID, retaliation from staff

[00:00:06] Natalie: So, um, lemme pull up the questions well and then we can get started. Um, what kind of conference were you at today?

[00:00:15] Ursula: Um, mental health conference. It was a call to so solidarity and it was really about homelessness and mental illness. That’s, I work in mental, uh, I work with, um, a company that evaluates all the mental health services in the county.

[00:00:29] Ursula: [Oh, wow.] Yeah, we, we are under contract with Oakland Community Health Network and a couple of the providers that are under, under them or one of their providers, we have a contract to do certain surveys with them as well.

[00:00:46] Natalie: Nice. I feel like I’d, I definitely wanna get your perspective on kind of, The mental health care in, in prison as well then since you’re like an expert.

[00:00:55] Ursula: Well, I am, and I’ll tell you as far as the mental health goes, I, I have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and A D H D. [Mm-hmm.] And I had been on the same meds four years and when I went to prison, they would not give them to me. They gave me some alternatives. They said they weren’t in the the state’s formulary to get them and.

[00:01:19] Ursula: I didn’t know any better at that when I first got there. You know what to do. I started, um, getting into it, but I had this mindset that no matter what, they have this formulary that they’re gonna go by, which I later found out they could have got prior authorization for me. Um, so I didn’t have my medicine until March.

[00:01:40] Ursula: I saw, um, I, so we’re talking, I was in there from July of 2019. Until, um, this past March I was just released December 13th. But I saw a new psychiatrist and I just had a breakdown with him and he said, well, we can get you that drug, uh, which is Abilify. It was just a mood stabilizer. He said, we don’t have to get prior auth, but we do have to get prior auth for the other drug.

[00:02:07] Ursula: And he did it. And my last, like nine months in prison was so much better. For me after, you know, they did a, we’ll get more into the stuff that I went through. Um, but yeah.

[00:02:23] Natalie: Yeah, that’s really troubling. Cause you, you knew what medication worked for you and they just didn’t really make that effort. Um, I have a, a friend with bipolar and she’s undergoing a D H D diagnosis as well, and she uses Abilify.

[00:02:34] Natalie: She has been going through a lot of different kind of meds, trying to figure out what, what works best for her. And there’s like a very drastic change depending on what med it is. And she can tell like as soon as, oh yeah. Like whether it’s working for her or not. And it can have pretty bad effects if it’s not the right one.

[00:02:51] Natalie: Yeah. Um, so let’s just. So starting off, basic introductory question. Um, you told me a little bit about this, but I just wanted to get it, um, down more concretely. So how long were you incarcerated for and when were you released?

[00:03:08] Ursula: About three and a half years, and I was just released December 13th.

[00:03:14] Natalie: Okay. And then can you tell me a little bit about, um, prison life and healthcare prior to Covid?

[00:03:21] Ursula: Um, well, prior to Covid, they put a lot of measures in place. I was, I had only been there about seven or eight months when Covid hit. Um, so I mean, I, I can tell you that, um, you wanted to know, oh my gosh, I just had a brain freeze. I’m, I’m having, I’ve been going through this memory thing. If I stop I might do that.

[00:03:46] Ursula: I should have probably told you that at the beginning. My memory and my doctor wants me to see a neurologist. It’s that serious. So, ok. So sometimes I can be saying something and then it just disappears. Mm-hmm. So, will you repeat the question, please?

[00:03:59] Natalie: Yeah, of course. Yeah, no worries. So, I just asked a little bit about how, um, life was in prison and the healthcare before Covid

[00:04:10] Ursula: Yeah, I couldn’t really speak too much of the healthcare. They did a full exam when I came in. Mm-hmm. Um, that was pretty much my dealings with them. Um, before Covid, um, after Covid, it was, it was every, we, we were in, in quarantine. If somebody. There was a lot of things going on from the beginning of the, um, COVID, you know, everybody started talking about it, I think in February of 21.

[00:04:39] Ursula: Was it? [Mm-hmm.] Or, yeah, February. I actually, they started taking measures at the prison, um, that March. They stopped, they shut down visiting and we could not eat with, or, you know, like we’re housed in these different buildings. We could not eat with somebody else in, in another building that was like, or another, I forget what they called it, but, um, the building that I was in, um, I had to go to all the meals.

[00:05:12] Ursula: When somebody tested positive in our unit, we would be quarantined for, I wanna say 10 days. The whole unit would be, yes, we’ll be quarantined for 10 days. We can’t go to the chow hall. Some of the time, well, we can, but we don’t get to go mingle usually, you know, they call different groups together so you don’t get to see, uh, everybody in the prison because they had a north side and a south side, or, or is it, or maybe it’s east or west, whatever.

[00:05:44] Ursula: Um, That’s how the prison was kind of classified. The one side was, one side was all of the, they only had one unit that was a level one and I was a level one. And, um, I didn’t get moved to that unit. I got moved to that unit up over in the, um, other side of the prison as a retaliatory action against the prison counselor that, uh, against me.

[00:06:11] Ursula: Um, I got moved for no reason at all. Um, but the part about it is that really sucks is that I got used to living, it was on the east side now. I got used to, and it’s like the prisoners are different, like on each side, and I think it on the other side of campus. Um, it’s mostly, you know, only one level, one unit.

[00:06:33] Ursula: So they have all these two threes and fours, um, all housed over in that area. And, and if they were like in solitary confinement, obviously they got their meals brought to them. I’m thanking God that I never had to go there.

[00:06:50] Natalie: Yeah. I hear some very scary stories about people in solitary, especially from like people who are, um, taking watch over people with like kind of more severe mental health issues and.

[00:07:04] Natalie: Uh, yeah, that, that stuff always makes me really sad. So it’s like they just need some help and stuff.

[00:07:11] Ursula: Oh, yeah. Locked up. I went through a really bad period in there, um, really depressed and it was, I don’t know, maybe have something to do with my surroundings. You know, but I wasn’t, I, when they started giving me, I basically Wellbutrin and Abilify, that’s my cocktail.

[00:07:29] Ursula: Um, when they started giving me that, um, I just, it changed for me. I was j just my prison sentence was much easier because I had dealt with, I dealt with so much stuff in there because I, I think because of the medication, um, that they wouldn’t give me my medication. I was very, um, my anxiety level was high.

[00:07:56] Ursula: I seemed stressed out all the time. I was obsessed with finding out my legal rights. Um, I went to the law library like three times a week for an hour. Um, and I had one of the things that, you know, we have to cl we have to have our room cleaned every morning by eight o’clock. And then, um, In the evening, lights go out.

[00:08:18] Ursula: I think at 11, yeah, it was 11. But, um, I ended up accumulating a lot of paperwork, um, legal stuff and that was kind of a problem for me having, cuz I didn’t have enough room to put it anywhere. Um, and so I, I would have it out and then I would stack it up and put it back in my locker almost every day. But I think that was part of my mental illness because I literally would have stacks of paper going through them and I would get frustrated like, I don’t know what I’m doing.

[00:08:50] Ursula: And this would go on for weeks where I would have all these stacks of paper. I don’t know what to put with what. And I really think that was part of my mental illness too.

[00:09:00] Natalie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s already a very. Stressful environment from what I can imagine. And then it just seems like it’s com like compounded by probably the pandemic and then you not having your proper medication.

[00:09:14] Ursula: Yeah, it was bad for me. And the other part of this, I’ll tell you, I was not typical prisoner. I was, I, I mean as far as my education and my work history and all of that, um, I mean, I was a C E O before I went to prison. Um, so I was different. I didn’t fit in really, and I spoke up when I thought that something was wrong, even to the staff and um, or when I spoke my mind to any of them, they retaliated like crazy.

[00:09:47] I mean, and you mentioned

[00:09:48] Natalie: that they moved you at one point. Were they retaliating in other ways as well?

[00:09:52] Ursula: Well, yeah. It was this lady, the prison counselor just didn’t like me and she just, Exchanged me to the west side, which the west side is the worst, is the bad, the bad side, because they’re the higher levels also, all those units don’t have air conditioning.

[00:10:09] Ursula: Oh, that wasn’t, yeah. So that was a big deal for me switching from the east side to the west side. Um, the other thing that, you know, I really should have been on the west side the whole time I was there because of I’m, I have a chronic bladder condition and there was toilets in the cells. On the west side in the one level, one unit that I was in.

[00:10:30] Ursula: And that just kind of pissed me off because of what I went through. I mean, they obviously, they weren’t treating my bladder condition. I have interstitial cystitis and I have to go to the bathroom a lot, and I had to like urinate in a towel in my garbage can. Um, because you, when you’re locked down in your room, if it’s count time, they have all these rules and I did not have a detail.

[00:10:54] Ursula: The detail is something that. Healthcare sends them that says like I’m in a wheelchair, or I have, I, I could have unlimited access to the bathroom. They would not give it to me. Yeah. So, um, I, it was very kind of, it was gross and it was embarrassing. Yeah. You know, to have to do that sometimes, but. The medicine that they, they finally did give me for, it was something that I had graduated from.

[00:11:23] Ursula: I mean, I, I went, they even took me to a urologist and she recommended that they give the whole same regimen that I had already had from my urologist. And they didn’t, they didn’t do any of it. Yeah. So I just, that was something that I dealt with.

[00:11:42] Natalie: Yeah. And so you were like, You were speaking up and you were looking into things, is there anything you could do to like force ’em to give you the right medications and, you know, provide those details

[00:11:55] Ursula: for you?

[00:11:55] Ursula: Um, I didn’t, uh, yeah, they have a grievance process. Okay. It’s a very lengthy process, and if you are not. Uh, compliant with the way that it’s supposed to happen. Like you have to file a grievance within five days, but within two days you have to try to work it out with that department or whatever. Is, that’s part of the grievance form is to, um, what attempt have you made to, to resolve this and when, and that has to occur within two days of the incident, and then on the fifth day, Um, you have by the fifth day after it happened, the grievance has to be sent to the grievance office.

[00:12:40] Ursula: So if you miss any of the, you know, those two deadlines, they send it back to you. They reject it untimely. So, um, I had a lot, it took me a while to really get that, so I had a lot of grievances that were denied for. A few days towards the end. Um, my last year, I really, um, I think I got good at writing grievances because they, they couldn’t, but they kept finding reasons to reject them, reasons that made no sense at all.

[00:13:12] Ursula: I mean, just, um, I wanna say one of the reasons, oh, I, I remember them doing something and I can’t remember what it was. Um, Okay, let’s move on cause I’m alright.

[00:13:29] Natalie: Um, the next question I have was, um, how did you first hear about Covid and what did the first responses to the pandemic look like for you? Well,

[00:13:40] Ursula: I heard about Covid on the news when I was watching the news, and then everybody was talking about it.

[00:13:46] Ursula: And then one day, it was March 13th, I think, of 2020 is when they closed the prison down. I mean, like, they close it down. We can’t have visitors. We can do any, have any outside people. If there were people that were coming in to teach a class or anything, there were no classes together because they didn’t want, they, they didn’t want the units to be cohorting where, you know, there’s po positive people.

[00:14:12] Ursula: Um, yeah. So I think, um, that was part of the very beginning stages.

[00:14:21] Natalie: Okay. Did you notice people getting sick before that time?

[00:14:26] Ursula: No. I was the sickest person in the prison that early on, um, I, I got diagnosed or I got tested and, um, I was positive on April 1st. Yeah. So I was the worst when on April 1st they had.

[00:14:45] Ursula: Um, well, they, once I tested positive, they quarantined all the positive people in like this gym slash warehouse building. It was just crazy with a bunch of cots there. That’s where everybody went. And then they had a nerv, uh, nurse come in twice a day to do our vitals.

[00:15:06] Ursula: And, um, I, the morning what happened with me, I deterior deteriorated very fast. Um, I was running a, a high temperature, um, I had the, the bathroom was at the other end of this, like warehouse that they had us in. Um, and so I got to a point where the other girls had to put me in a wheelchair and push me to go to the bathroom because I was so weak and I was hot and I was cold.

[00:15:34] Ursula: It was just awful, awful. Um, and I asked for the officer for attention, um, one night. I, they, they, I found out that they were recording my temperature round because there’s no way that, like, I’m serious, I’m in my records. They didn’t record the, the right temperature. I have those medical records and I know when that, when they gave me, I, I listened to them tell me what my temperature was.

[00:16:03] Ursula: Mm. You know, so when I was, I was like crying and. I, I mean, obviously in distress, I could hardly breathe. I was gasping for air. I thought my throat was gonna shut off, and the officer told me the nurse is on her way. She didn’t come for another hour while I sit, sat by the officer station. It was almost an hour, um, with another inmate.

[00:16:27] Ursula: That was just, everybody was really afraid for me because they’re, they were all positive what was happening to me. I would’ve been scared shitless too. You know, they were watch, they watched me deteriorate to the point where I couldn’t even get up and walk to the bathroom and I couldn’t eat anything.

[00:16:45] Ursula: That was the other part of it. I, I wasn’t eating. I ended up losing like 40 pounds during the whole or ordeal. And part of that is just because I had no taste buds for a long time after that. Um, unfortunately I gained it all back, but I’m working on it again.

[00:17:07] Natalie: Well, it seems like it’s it’s healthier to be gaining than losing it.

[00:17:11] Natalie: Yeah. Like that, especially like probably at that pace that you’re losing it. Um, yeah. So you mentioned earlier you have some kind of brain fog and, and memory issues. Do you think that’s because of you having Covid Covid? Yeah, absolutely. Cause I’ve heard that being, uh, a long lasting, like people call it long covid.

[00:17:27] Natalie: Yeah. Long. Long, um, long effects happening, especially I’m sure like if your fever was really high, that that would mess those things up. What were they doing to treat you? Were they giving you medications or

[00:17:40] Ursula: Nothing. And while we were in this warehouse, it’s called the M s I building, when we were in there, they just took our temperature and our, um, blood pressure.

[00:17:51] Ursula: They just had the nurse come in like twice a day to do that. They weren’t giving us, I mean, I, I can’t say that, um, there was anything wrong about that because I don’t think that there was anything that they could do. It was just the very beginning. They didn’t know what they could give us or, you know, how, what the, the causes or what, what the side effects would be.

[00:18:12] Ursula: Um, but I remember finally, The one did the last time I saw the nurse in this warehouse, um, she took my temperature and it was high, and she said, I don’t remember what it was exactly, but um, the other person that was sitting next to me, who I have her name, and she told me, you know, if you, you ever need me, I heard them do this.

[00:18:38] Ursula: She actually ran up to me when she saw me out on grounds months later. But the nurse, um, when I was, I was sitting there grasping for air. The nurse, um, took everybody else’s vitals. There were about 20 women before she made the call to the, to the prison doctor. And then when she called him, he said to call the ambulance immediately, but she had left there instead of calling.

[00:19:07] Ursula: After, I don’t know if she was calling to report temperatures if anybody was high and she was just waiting, but I was lit, literally there crying, sobbing while I was struggling to breathe. It was the worst thing ever in my house. My hospital record on the, um, discharge instructions they gave me, um, not just the discharge report, it talked about how I came in at moderate to severe respiratory distress.

[00:19:36] Ursula: That’s what is in my, my medical record. So, I mean, it was, it was really awful just sitting there thinking my throat was gonna close off and I was not gonna be able to breathe. Yeah. [Yeah. That sounds

[00:19:49] Natalie: horrifying. Mm-hmm. Um, how soon were things like masks and vaccines available to you guys? Um,

[00:20:02] Ursula: masks. They started us with the masks, I think in May or no, April.

[00:20:08] Ursula: I may, they started wearing it because when I, I was in the hospital for the whole month of April pretty much. So I’m thinking that when I came back, we had masks when I went back to the regular, uh, unit that I was in. Um, There was some units where the officers were making the inmates do some extra cleaning, which was fine, you know, disinfecting stuff as much as possible.

[00:20:40] Ursula: Um, that was a big thing. Um, during, um, Yeah, I just, visits were cut off, all classes were cut off. And that’s what, that, that delayed a lot of people’s release, including mine. Mm. Because when you go to prison, you, they sit you down and they do this, um, this report with you and they figure out what level you need to be and what classes that you’re gonna need to take for the parole board.

[00:21:11] Ursula: So when Covid happened and they stopped having the people come in to teach the classes, Um, everybody that was waiting for this, the classes, their prison stay was extended because they did not, had not taken the classes at no fault of their own, you know, so my, at my release date, I was in class, so I, it still took them like four months to release me after that, just going through the whole process.

[00:21:44] So how soon

[00:21:45] Natalie: did all of these classes start back up for you guys?

[00:21:49] Ursula: Um, I wanna say last summer. Last summer? Yeah.

[00:21:54] Natalie: Yeah.

[00:21:58] Natalie: So I’m guessing it affected a lot of people’s releases is so, did you say that your release was delayed by four

[00:22:04] Ursula: months?] Yeah. Oh, well, I’m, I was, I got out December, I was supposed to get out July 6th and I got out December 13th. So it’d be like five months. Yeah, five months. Yeah.

[00:22:18] Natalie: Um, and when the pandemic was kind of at its worst, was anyone, you know, getting released on time? Because I can’t imagine wanting to keep anything in prison. No,

[00:22:32] Ursula: they would not. Um, There was even classes that they wanted that they could have taken in the community, and they wouldn’t let them do it. They wouldn’t let me do it.

[00:22:41] Ursula: I, I tried, and I know a lot of other people that tried,[ did they start

[00:22:46] Natalie: offering any Zoom options for these classes?

[00:22:50] Ursula: No. Nothing like that. So everything was kind of just shut down completely. Yes. Everything, nobody was coming into the prison that didn’t work there. And that was it, you know.

[00:23:05] Ursula: So

[00:23:06] Natalie: you had a very like bad case of covid. Did you catch it like more than once or was it just that one time?

[00:23:13] Ursula: Um, I got it another time last summer. Um, Okay. It was pretty, very mild. Nothing like, you know, I, I was tested. I just know my roommate had it and I test, I tested positive after she had it. What happened before?

[00:23:29] Ursula: We knew that cuz they were testing us once a week. That’s, that’s kind of important that I should tell you. They were giving us tests once a week. Okay.

[00:23:45] Ursula: Anything

[00:23:45] Natalie: else? I was wondering how prison staff responded to pandemic protocols? Did they wear masks or get vaccinated?

[00:23:54] Ursula: Yeah. Um, most of them wear their masks, but [Okay.] Many of them did not. Even when they’re, that everybody was mandatory for everybody, they, they did not, or they have ’em hanging off their face.

[00:24:07] Ursula: And the problem with that was that if we forgot our mask or our mouth and nose wasn’t covered, we’d get a ticket. Hmm. You know, um, that was, some of the officers would give you a warning, but pretty much it’s something, it’s like a class three ticket, which is, which is the, the least, uh, punishable I should, whatever the word is.

[00:24:30] Ursula: Um, yeah, it was the, A class that goes, class one is really bad, class two is somewhat bad. Class three is a slap on the wrist. So,

[00:24:43] Natalie: Can you kind of explain more about how like tickets work? Is it like if you get a certain, like if you explain the severity, but if you got like a certain number of tickets, how would that affect

[00:24:53] Ursula: you?

[00:24:54] Ursula: Well, it did affect me, so I’ll tell you how it affected me. Um, so an officer writes a ticket. They have 24 hours to read you on this ticket, and it can’t be the same officer that wrote the ticket. So they, um, you can plead guilty or not guilty on these tickets if you plead guilty. Usually if you plead guilty, they’ll say you’re gonna get, this is gonna be your punishment, and it might be three days lockdown, or you know, where they, you can’t come out of your room except for, um, events and showers and, you know, and food.

[00:25:31] Ursula: Um, they would, they, that was like, uh, Most, most, most people got that, you know, even, even with the class three, they would get like three days. Okay. Um, yeah. And so my, um, when I, I was in a unit, um, the vocational village unit, um, that is a, it’s a, like a trade. They, they teach trades to us. They had C D L.

[00:26:01] Ursula: Cosmetology, um, robotics and um, uh, the food people, I forgot what they called it, food services or people that were learning how to cook gourmet meals and all that stuff. And so all of the people in vocational village stayed at the Dickinson unit. So we were, you know, just there, there were just two housing units that were.

[00:26:31] Ursula: Committed to having those people being trained. So we actually got up and went to class at six 30 and we didn’t get back to our building until two 30. Doing one of those traits. So I was in that and there was a prison counselor that was over the program that just didn’t like me. She, because I spoke up, I, I’m not quiet.

[00:26:52] Ursula: If there’s something going wrong, if I know it’s wrong, I’m gonna tell them that it’s wrong. But this lady, she just had it out for me. She, when I was on, um, she had, first of all, they wrote me, she targeted me after I filed a grievance on her. And she was kind of, Over the staff that worked in the housing unit.

[00:27:14] Ursula: So they were told, I believe my, somebody else told me my name was up on the board, like on the scratch paper in the office, on the cabinet. They just saw my na last name on there. And I wonder if that was to let everybody know to not let me get away with anything or, you know, not that I was really doing anything, but, um, there was one.

[00:27:39] Ursula: Um, Incident where the lady wrote me. I was, I was on, um, I was paying for a ticket. What do you, what am I calling? I was doing my, doing my days, and I had to come out and ask for permission to go get water, for example. Um, and if I was using the bathroom, I better not turn the corner or go anywhere else than what I’m instructed or what I, you know what I mean?

[00:28:09] Ursula: But we had eight 30 to 10 30, no, eight 30 to nine 30 window when we could get out and shower and all that. And that’s it for, for, you know. Um, let’s see. Oh, I was telling you about the, the, this, this PC prison counselor. If I say pc, that’s what that means. Okay. Um. She wanted to listen to my legal phone call.

[00:28:41] Ursula: So when you’re on, when you’re on punishment and you’re in, you’re, I forgot what they called it, you’re, um, you can’t use the phone except for that hour that you have in the morning, but if it’s a legal call, you can call, and that includes the legislative ament. You’re supposed to be able to call. That’s who you contact after you’ve tried grievances, blah, blah, blah.

[00:29:08] Ursula: Somebody in Lansing. Um, and she’s, because I was, I, she had to give me that call. She had to unlock my pen, so she said she was gonna be listening to it. So I said to her, like, not right away, but I said like, when we were getting in the elevator to go to lunch, and she was leaving, I said, you know, I’m not really comfortable, um, with you being on my phone call.

[00:29:32] Ursula: I didn’t say, the policy says this. I said, I’m not really comfortable with you being, well, that’s my job. I’m gonna, she just, yeah. And I’m like, you can’t. So I filed a grievance against her and it says clearly in the policy that they will not listen, monitor legal calls. And that was the only kind of call that I could make.

[00:29:53] Ursula: And I’m like, I’m not gonna, first of all, when you, you’re on the phone, you only get a 15 minute limit and it cuts you off. So I can’t talk very long anyways. Um, so I guess she thought like that gave me an opportunity. If she wasn’t listening to make other calls, I don’t know what her thinking was. You couldn’t get after your 15 minute call.

[00:30:18] Ursula: You can’t redial a number until another 15 minutes passes. That’s how the phone goes. Yeah. So if you are in, you know, you, you can every, I think it’s every, well, no, it wasn’t by time. It was just a 15 minute call cut off and then you couldn’t get back on until after you waited 15 minutes.

[00:30:42] Natalie: Yeah.

[00:30:46] Natalie: Did. Your, like, access to phones or other ways of communicating with outside be, were they impacted by the pandemic or did everything remain rather consistent?

[00:30:58] Ursula: Well, they were, they were impacted because of retaliation. Yeah. Um, at some point I stopped getting mail, like, except for if it was from in the prison.

[00:31:09] Ursula: And yeah, it’s possible that nobody wrote me, but for a long time. Um, I, I’m surprised they let my birthday card come through from my aunt, but I know, um, that I was missing some mail and I had an issue with the mail room because they, at the beginning of my sentence, my sister sent me some of my medical records.

[00:31:35] Ursula: And when I told sh I waited a week, and I, I, so I sent a kite to the mail room and I said, if you. These, these medical records were supposed to come, blah, blah, blah. So they write me back and they say, well, if it was medical, we gave it to healthcare. You have to order it from them. Oh, hell no. I’m not paying 25 cents a page.

[00:31:56] Ursula: Oh my gosh. Or 60 pages. Yeah. They wanted me to pay for my own copies. And then after, after I filed the grievance and all was said and done, they never got ’em, was what they said. So that’s how that went.

[00:32:15] Natalie: So you were getting mail pretty consistently and then all of a sudden it kind of stopped?

[00:32:21] Ursula: Yeah. Yeah. I would get a couple pieces of mail every week. I mean, I, I have a big family I was doing, we know we have JPay, which is like our, our own email. System, but you, you know, people have to communicate with you through the JPay website by time we’re buy stamps for you. Mm-hmm. You know, it was like an email system where you use, you use stamps, but it wasn’t expensive.

[00:32:48] Ursula: It was like 20 stamps for $5 or something like that. Okay. Yeah. So, and I can’t think of anything else I should say. Um,

[00:33:01] Natalie: No. Um, okay. I have a few more questions. Um, I wanted to hear a little bit about how people in prison interacted with each other as the pandemic happened, because talking to other people, it sounds like there was a lot of tension that started building because of the stressful situation.

[00:33:22] Natalie: But there’s also a sense of kind of like dependency because. You know, people had to take care of each other in this kind of time. Did you notice anything like that?

[00:33:31] Ursula: No. I think, like, I don’t, everybody, um, some of the prisoners would get like offended if, if you weren’t wearing your mask. Mm-hmm. And, and your, in somebody’s face or whatever.

[00:33:45] Ursula: But I don’t, um, I don’t, I can’t, I can’t, I don’t think I can put that into words. Like what I’m trying to, can you repeat the question?

[00:33:55] Natalie: So how did. People in the prison, like how did incarcerated people interact with each other as the pandemic took hold and what were their negative and positive responses to the situation?

[00:34:06] Natalie: Um,

[00:34:06] Ursula: well we were, we, we were cohorted with, you know, only certain groups. And to be honest, there were the, everybody was mad because they didn’t get to see other people in the prison. And a lot of them had their boot thing on the other side of the. You know, and that would be the only time, you know, cause they, they did have relationships going on in there.

[00:34:25] Ursula: Mm-hmm. So a lot of people were mad about that, that that was a, the negative thing. They couldn’t see who they wanted to see by getting out of the building and going to lunch or running into somebody. It’s because they had a STA cohort. But other than that, I think everybody was just super clean. Like everybody, we were, we had, we did extra cleaning.

[00:34:48] Ursula: Okay.

[00:34:51] Ursula: Um,

[00:34:52] Natalie: another thing I wanted to ask about, was there a kind of general mental health decline in the facility, or what kind of like ways do people use to cope with all these changes happening cuz of the pandemic?

[00:35:05] Ursula: Um, I don’t, I can’t really speak to that with the, the mental health side of things just because, um,

[00:35:16] Ursula: I was going, like I said, for until I was nine months away from going home, they gave me my, you know, so my mental health just wasn’t, it was not because of my medication and then what was going on. Um, but I don’t, I don’t know that I noticed anybody else. I do know that there were, while, while I was there, there were a couple of suicides.

[00:35:37] Ursula: Um, and I don’t know, I think one girl, she did it in the, in the shower with a sheet and um, I’m not sure what happened to the other person that died. They kept hush hush pretty much about it, but I was able to talk to somebody that was in her housing unit that died. Um, yeah, so I think. I think if I had to go back there for a number, number of years, I would wanna die first.

[00:36:07] Ursula: Really, it’s, it’s that bad. It was that bad for me. Maybe not other people, but the fact that they got away with breaking so many rules, breaking the law, and my thing was how can we be held accountable for a crime while we’re with people that are committing crimes against us? Because that’s pretty much what it was.

[00:36:29] Ursula: They were violating the law. We have, you know, the First Amendment deals with the mail and, and freedom of speech and all that. They weren’t sending my mail out and I know I only confirmed it from a couple people. Um, but we, and, but it was legal mail. And that’s the only proof that I have of anything that I sent out.

[00:36:49] Ursula: Because if we had legal mail and we wanted it to be expedited, we had to fill out a form to pay for the postage and process it as such. Um, they didn’t, I, I talked to a lawyer that didn’t receive my letter and it was happened to be a friend of mine that I kinda lost touch with, but I was reading a law journal.

[00:37:12] Ursula: In the law library. I hadn’t seen this person for years and years. Um, well not that long. He, he was, he was a, I think his first year, um, when I met him in, under his first undergrad. Yeah. So I think it had been at least like 10 years. So I, I think they. Considered it because I didn’t have his bar number and I just had his address.

[00:37:41] Ursula: Um, they rejected it at first and I went back to the law library and looked him up and there was a bar number there. And so that letter supposedly went out. But when I came home, he told me he did not get an email from me, and he, he’s an attorney and he would’ve been able to help me with some of the things that I, he was going through.

[00:38:04] Ursula: So, and then, um, my aunt didn’t get a letter from me before. Um, one, the, there was one letter that I know of that wasn’t delivered. I can’t think of anybody else, but I just felt that it was awfully strange that I stopped getting mail, you know, and I, I mean, and I really don’t have any proof cuz maybe people stop writing.

[00:38:26] Ursula: I, I just don’t believe that. Talking to people and then the people that I don’t to that talk to who prefer to email me or write in letters and write letters. I mean, yeah. So,

[00:38:42] Natalie: so you do have proofs that people didn’t get mail that you sent out? Yes. Yes. So, and there’s like kind of two big of coincidence there to entirely ignore the fact, right?

[00:38:53] Natalie: Yeah. So, The pe So you say like the prison staff kind of disregarded their own rules because, and did kind of whatever they wanted to to you guys? That part.

[00:39:07] Ursula: Yeah. I mean they, they will find a reason to do, you know, give you a ticket or if they really want to, you know, cause that’s what they did with me. I got seven tickets one morning from.

[00:39:20] Ursula: Eight 30 to 10 30 when I had to be outta my room. This lady wrote me seven tickets and wouldn’t, and she made it obvious that they were targeting me because I came out in the morning of my cell, walked straight to the officer’s station, and I said, can I, and before I finish, are you bolting? You can’t be outta your room.

[00:39:42] Ursula: I said, I know, that’s why I’m asking for. She just made it really obvious that they were, no, you need to go to your room. And that same morning she wrote me seven tickets for just stupid shit. All of them got thrown out, but one, it was, yeah. Because that’s, if you plead not guilty on something, you have to see somebody else that’s like the lieutenant or something like that would read the ticket and then they would decide.

[00:40:08] Ursula: And usually if you do plead not guilty and, and they, um, you have to go see that other person. The punishment is usually worse, like more days. Mm. Okay. Yeah.

[00:40:24] Natalie: Um,

[00:40:28] Natalie: I think that’s about all of the questions I had. Is there anything else you wanna share? Um, no,

[00:40:36] Ursula: not really. I just, I think, um, maybe just to tell you about the severity of the, of me having c I d I was on a ventilator for three weeks and I, I almost died. My, um, family knew about it. Um, And my son’s college girlfriend was one of the nurses.

[00:41:00] Ursula: I never saw her, but she was reporting to my son who had power of attorney. They wouldn’t, they didn’t call my, they didn’t know that my son had access to the doctors. He talked to a doctor every day that I was on the ventilator. They didn’t contact him until after I came off of the ventilator, which was like almost a month.

[00:41:23] Ursula: Before they notified my family because I couldn’t use the phone, I couldn’t do anything. Well, before they put me on the ventilator, they told me, um, they, they told me basically, you might not wake up from this. You know, so I begged them to make a phone call and they let me make the phone call. But my son, he, his, like I said, his college girlfriend worked at the hospital and he just called and established that he was my medical power of attorney and they spoke with him every day and, and so when they called at the end of April when I got off of the ventilator and told my son, your mom has covid, she’s hospitalized, but she’s fine.

[00:42:02] Ursula: My, my cousin or my son said, he just went off like, what do you mean? My mom has been on her deathbed for all this time, and you know, that it was just ridiculous. They didn’t notify the family so I could have just died and then they would’ve ca, you know what I mean? How that, it was just really awful For

[00:42:23] Natalie: awful.

[00:42:23] Natalie: Yeah. So it’s, it was, you know, there’s hard, there’s hard, it’s hard to contact, especially when you were. That sick and then they tried to kind of lie to him assuming he didn’t know what was happening. Right.

[00:42:37] Ursula: Like he didn’t, they didn’t think that he knew. And you know, another thing I’ll, I’ll throw in there is I had, um, an emergency that I had to go to the hospital for.

[00:42:46] Ursula: I needed, um, my appendix appendectomy. They took me to the same hospital. And when they did that, they made that determination. They started to prep me for surgery and they said, no, she’s not staying here. We’re driving her to another hospital. Yes.

[00:43:03] Natalie: why were they taking you to a different hospital?

[00:43:05] Ursula: Well, my thing was because they found out that my son had access to somebody at that hospital.

[00:43:13] Ursula: Oh, I see. And he had already established medical power of attorney. They didn’t want him knowing anything. And so they sent me to a hospital in East Lansing from Ypsilanti.

[00:43:27] Ursula: And it was, it was what was so bad. It was just really, have you ever had problems with your gall bladder or you know about, you know, if you need to get your appendix removed, the pain that you’re in?

[00:43:40] Natalie: My mom has told me a story when she was. Younger, she had her appendix ruptured. She went to a doctor that, you know, she was in this tremendous amount of pain that suddenly stopped.

[00:43:51] Natalie: And then the doctor said, oh, well, it, it was probably just like a stomach. They sent her home and then, you know, they went back to the doctor the next day and my grandma explained the situation and they were like, we need to get her into a surgery room right now. And my mom’s appendix had ruptured and. It had caused damage to where she had scar tissue around like all of her organs.

[00:44:11] Natalie: That still affects her, and so she had bladder removed later. Oh, wow. Mm-hmm.

[00:44:20] Ursula: That’s scary too. Yeah. Well, I’m sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say if you have any other questions for me, you can email me if you need to interview me or get clarification on anything that I said cuz I, my, cuz of my memory, you know, um, just give me a call or send me an email or, you know, we can zoom again.

[00:44:44] Ursula: Okay.

[00:44:44] Natalie: Okay. Well thank you very much for meeting with me today and, and sharing.

[00:44:50] Ursula: Um, you’re welcome. Now, will I get to see your finished project? Of

[00:44:54] Natalie: course, yeah. I’ll keep you updated on it. Um, alright, we’ll, we’ll be working on it throughout the summer and I think the, the final thing will be done, um, probably end of August, beginning of September.

[00:45:06] Natalie: Okay.

[00:45:07] Ursula: That sounds good. And I do, I was thinking of one other person that you might be able to talk to, but I haven’t gotten in touch with her, somebody else that was in prison with me. Okay. Um, maybe I planned on trying, digging out her phone number. She, she lives in Detroit, but if I do, um, make contact with her, I will send you an email and let you know if she’s interested.

[00:45:30] Ursula: All right. Great. Thank you. Okay. Mm-hmm. You’re welcome. All right. Have a good day. You too. Thanks. Bye-Bye. Bye.