An Environment Not Conducive to Healing

Jail is a fairly dirty place to live.  Two weeks ago I started to show signs of catching a nasty cough that is circulating.  I've been taking 1000mg of vitamin C and a large multivitamin since the day after I thought this might be happening.  Regardless of my efforts, I got the bug - which my mother promptly dubbed "Kennel Cough".  

I thought the worst of it was over last Tuesday, but the crud simply relocated from my lungs to my sinuses.  Whenever something settles in my sinuses, it eventually starts to leak through my eyes - producing symptoms that appear very much like a bad case of "Pink Eye".  For a week now my eyes make me appear to be regularly smoking copious amounts of marijuana and people at work have been asking me suspiciously if I feel alright.

It seems to be slowly dissipating, but only with the help of Clear Eyes.  I am unfortunately not allowed to being my little bottle of eye drops into the jail.  Medications can be brought in, but must be sealed in their original packaging.  This rule, however, does not apply to liquids such as this.  If I want to use them, I have to get a guard's approval to take them at my outside locker.

In Work Release, you have two lockers.  One is located on the "outside" of the jail, in a glass and steel breezeway.  This is the locker where you can deposit items not allowed in the dorm.  Upon return each evening from work, I fill mine with my backpack, mobile phone, eye drops and cigarettes.  In the dorm, we each have a tall wooden locker next to our bunks.  This contains your clothing, laundry detergent and any other items you are allowed to bring in with you that you want to keep from being stolen.

While the dorm itself isn't the most disgusting place I have ever seen, it still makes one paranoid for their health.  There are frequent leaks in the roof.  The showers never seem to be properly cleaned, the floors sticky and dust collects on the top of anything above eye level.  Cleaning the dorm is a responsibility shared by all inmates on a rotational basis.  Every evening at about 8:30 the guard will post an assigned list of chores.  A few of the more financially desperate inmates always offer to do your chore for a few dollars, but my concern for their lack of attention-to-detail has kept me from obliging.  The fear a guard will take issue with a poorly done chore keeps me from paying another to do my work for me.  It would certainly not reflect well and forever stain my relationship with the guard if I simply left the responsibility to another and they failed.