In 2014, the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women agreed to settle a lawsuit over its failure to provide adequate medical care for prisoners, but the Legal Aid Justice Center is back in court this week, asking a judge to step-in. One of the plaintiffs is a 63-year-old woman from Lynchburg.
Sherry Richburg lives in a small white house with two dogs she rescued, Ace and Brownie. The brothers, part pug, part daschund, keep watch over the property, and she takes good care of them. Brownie, she notes, has back trouble and allergies.
"I give him half a Benadryl, and it helps him to sleep, because all night he’s up crying and scratching," she explains. "I know how it feels to be in pain and itching too. It’s miserable."
Twenty-five years ago Richburg was a social worker in California. One day, en route to Pasadena, she was in a head-on collision. She spent a year in the hospital as everything but her right leg healed. Needing follow-up care, she returned to live with her father in Lynchburg, and doctors at UVA tried a surgery to help her walk again. Instead, she developed a deadly fungal infection that could only be controlled with a drug called Diflucan.
"The medication was very, very expensive," she recalls, "$767 for 60 tablets."
But she came up with the cash and was soon well enough to help care for 16 grandchildren and her 91-year-old dad, taking him to doctors' appointments at the Veterans Administration hospital and meeting the kids at their school bus stop. When a friend asked her to deliver a package, she didn’t hesitate.
"What took place was my fault," she admits. " I can’t blame anybody but myself. It was my stupidity. Ignorance of the law is no excuse."
A judge sentenced her to 20 months behind bars – but the punishment would turn out to be much worse. Despite a court order to improve woefully inadequate medical care, the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women failed to provide the medication Richburg needed. Day after day she was told the Diflucan had not arrived. She told prison staff she would pay for the drug herself.
"The whole time this fungus is steadily getting out of control," she says, choking back tears. "When they took me out of there in September to UVA Dr. Gable couldn’t find a pulse, and Dr. Cui said, ‘Sherry, you’re supposed to be on this medication, and I said, ‘I told them, but they wouldn’t give it to me.’”
She was treated and returned to the prison infirmary for six weeks, but when she was freed in February, she was not well.
“When my daughter-in-law would sit me up to try to bathe me, I didn’t even have the strength to sit up, she says, "and I was in so much pain!”
Her children took her back to UVA, where doctors removed her leg to save her life. Today she’s in a wheelchair, moving easily around the house, looking after the dogs.
“Let’s go. Nap time. Head ‘em up, move ‘em out, rawhide!" she shouts as Brownie and Ace head for their beds.
Her lawyers, Brenda Castaneda and Shannon Ellis, say many women at Fluvanna are still unable to get their medication or the right care for serious conditions.
“For instance a client of ours is now mostly blind, because she has spent many years in prison not getting appropriate treatment for her type one diabetes,” Castaneda says.
“We have one plaintiff who is awaiting a hip replacement, and while she’s waiting her hip is sinking in, so her legs are uneven,” Ellis adds. “She needs a prosthesis for her shoe, so she can stand steadily, and Fluvanna has not provided that to her.”
“Just basic things,” Castaneda concludes.
If a judge agrees, the state could be hit with fine,s and someone could be appointed to enforce the original agreement. Sherry Richburg hopes that will happen.
“I know with my speaking out, somebody’s life will be saved.”
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
