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| Inmate Seeks Treatment for Spider Bite |
| By The News Examiner |
| Published: 03/27/2006 |
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Joseph Stephen Burnett, one of Tennessee's Sumner County jail inmates, said he was bitten by a brown recluse spider and wasn't given enough medical treatment. Burnett is in jail for violation of probation for a DUI charge. Burnett said he noticed two bites on Jan. 29. When he woke up on the morning of Jan. 30 he felt like his knee was on fire. “I wrote a request to the nurse at 10:30 a.m.,” Burnett said in an interview at the jail. “I begged every officer to take me to the nurse. I was in tears.” He said at that point he did not know it was a spider bite, but he was in pain. The department works with local medical professionals to address any medical problems, said assistant Chief Deputy Bob Barker. “Every request we get for medical care, we forward that to the medical people,” he said. According to Barker, after a medical request is sent to the medical staff, the medical professionals take the next step and do all the follow-up. After Burnett asked for help on several occasions, jail guards eventually told him the nurse was gone, Burnett said. “I called my wife and she called the jail and was told by a sergeant it was a spider bite and he will be fine until the morning.” The second shift gave him four ibuprofen, he said. By the time third shift came, his knee was swollen twice the normal size, he said. Two officers from the third shift looked at his knee and they were concerned and took his temperature, but he did not have a fever. “They told me if I had a fever, they would take me to the emergency room, but I didn't so I had to wait on the nurse,” Burnett said. The Sumner County jail has a contract through the county to provide inmate care, Barker said. “It is a well-documented regulated and mandated basic requirement of any jail facility to provide basic care,” he said. “We don't have people trained in the medical field. They are trained in basic first aid.” Barker didn't know if there were brown recluse spiders in the jail. There's no way of being sure about the origin of a bite, he said. “I don't know that anybody can say they know for sure they were bit by a spider,” he said. Burnett claims he was told he did in fact have a spider bite. “I finally saw the nurse, Miss Sandra, the morning of Jan. 31, she told me I had an actual spider bite, she said I was probably the third person she has saw with a true spider bite,” he said. Burnett said he also saw the doctor he named as “Dr. Stewart, “who also told him he had a spider bite. When reached for comment, David Stewart said he would neither confirm nor deny the inmate's story. |
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