Don Quixote In Handcuffs

He’s been in prison since 1992, since he was 20 years old. He’s 37 now. He’s been isolated in SHU (Special Housing Unit) and on a hunger strike for 6 days, and has resumed eating now that he’s been granted an appointment with the doctor. He’s here sitting on the exam table, in handcuffs, with a guard looming in the doorway. He wants to see a neurologist. He wants an MRI. He believes something is wrong with his brain.

He also has a history of inserting razor blades up his rectum.

He says in 1987 he escaped from a juvenile detention center and was struck by a car while crossing a highway. At that time, he says, he suffered a brain injury and was in a coma for a month. Before that, he had two falls from heights as a child. Because his parents were uneducated, they didn’t get him proper medical care. We don’t have records of these events, so we have no way of verifying his story. He himself says that when his lawyers were planning his defense years ago in court, they could not gather all the data he describes.

At some point he had an EEG, an electroencephalogram. This test is common for people who suffer seizures, and the type and sequence of brain activity can sometimes tell us something about what’s going on in the brain. He says this EEG showed “brain dysfunction” and he wants an MRI to finally figure out what’s been wrong with him all these years. He believes he’ll get an explanation for the headaches, the problems concentrating, the mood swings, the difficulties with relationships, and the moments where he feels that he simply can’t express himself.

The more we talk with him, the clearer it becomes that he’s searching for an explanation of his life’s arc; for why he’s been locked up for twenty years.

“I would rather not be here talking about old problems,” he says. “I have better things to do.” He wants to move forward, and believes the answer may be an MRI away.

This is his creation myth, his legend, and his quest for a holy grail.

Now it’s our turn. The doctor is sympathetic, but focused. He explains that an EEG often shows nothing specific. He tells the patient he’s put too much weight on this one test done years ago. As for the MRI the doctor asks, somewhat rhetorically, what would happen if he gets the test and it comes back clean?

The doctor says, gently but without equivocation, that he believes the patient is mentally ill. He asks him to see the staff psychiatrist, and promises that we’ll investigate the MRI and medical path as well, just to be sure. Afterwards, he’ll say to me that this could be one of the better uses of the MRI here at the prison. It may bring some closure to this man’s searching and set him down a new path.

Who knows? … At least it will offer him an opportunity to write a new story, a chance at a new creation myth shaped from within rather than from without. I can’t say I’m terrifically hopeful: Being mentally ill in prison is no picnic. But I’m happy to give him the opportunity. In any case, it’s all I can do.