Tomiekia Johnson is currently serving time in the Central California Women's Facility.
Locks braided in straight backs, standing around 5' 3" and 100lbs, I recently met up with a transgender friend of mine I've known for more than 11 years – Medeon Dean. He has lost a significant amount of weight. I barely recognized him a few months ago when I returned to C Yard. Medeon, and a host of other trans and I have been hooping on the basketball courts of the Central California Women's facility (CCWf) for years. I'm typically referred to as the only "girl" on the court.
Despite the ignorant accusations of me being "transphobic," I'm perfectly comfortable around natal women identifying as transmen. They are authentic and I believe them – that matters. Anyhow, today we ain't hooping because Medeon is still recovering from being poisoned by his CCWf medically administered testosterone shots – hormone therapy. Medeon wanted people to know that he was never fully informed as to what is actually hidden in the hormone therapy shots, the adverse impact it could potentially have on his health. He deems the medicine unsafe, and potentially deadly. He will share intimate details that others in his position wouldn't want to tell.
We both wish to confront CCWf and California about the potentially deadly medicines they are injecting in the bodies of teens, girls, boys, young adults, and inmates across the sanctuary state. Medeon's account of his debilitating experience is not being shared to convince others to give up on the medicine, he simply wants to better inform people about his health outcome after more than four years of taking the hormone therapy.
Politicians like San Francisco Senator Scott Wiener, who authored the controversial legislation SB132 – which nonchalantly houses biological male inmates from men's prisons in women's prisons upon self identifying as non male, has hoodwinked Governor Gavin Newsom – who has allowed female inmates sentenced to rehabilitate, access to abortion, and Plan B on his watch. There is a growing number of youth and incarcerated people – the most vulnerable Californians – rushing to access the physiologically debilitating, life threatening, and under-scienced controversial hormone medications in the "free-world" and in prison, where state officials use inmate populations to test vile pilot programs before they subject the general public to the programs they proved to themselves are poisonous and dysfunctional, usually at the behest of federal funding.
One cool afternoon I was traversing the C Yard track when I stopped in my tracks at the sight of a frail Medeon, leaned forward in a slowly moving wheelchair. I immediately asked, "Medeon, what happened to you?" All he would initially say was, "I'm sick." To no avail, I gave him space. I knew he would eventually tell me what was going on. I'm also a Prison Lawyer, so I reflected speculatively on how I helped Medeon formulate and file his grievances years back when a CCWf nurse was being extremely negligent administering the testosterone shots to him and a few other trans people. Trans folks were complaining about this nurse not paying attention; Medeon said the nurse inadvertently administered the testosterone into his sciatic nerve.
Medeon would later tell me he was having problem after problem with the whole California administered gender transitioning process. Negligence was afoot and it was growing taller than the Chowchilla skies.
Medeon said, "after 4 years on the hormone therapy, my body started to break down at the 2-year mark. I started to develop symptoms, and it was hard for me to breathe. My body was fatigued and things weren't adding up. I had questions. Was I supposed to feel like this?" His eyes were sad, and I saw a raging storm challenging his thoughts. "What am I taking? What do these hormones consist of?" Medeon asked rhetorically as he described how he backtracked his journey and enlisted his sister to do research for him.
"She looked up the adverse effects of the hormones I had been given, and I was like, oh my God! How did I not know this? I wasn't educated." He said. He spoke to a CCWf doctor and the doctor told him "feeling this way is normal. All transgenders are going through this." Medeon said he questioned his own inexperience with introducing biological and chemistry-altering medicines to his body. He questioned why he didn't ask if the testosterone would harm or kill him. He questioned the doctors even more, reasoning "shouldn't they have told me this was going to do this?"
Medeon described a day when he was experiencing a fast heartbeat, "I felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest." He went to see the doctor and was initially misdiagnosed with pulmonary embolism. Once the misdiagnosis was unraveled, the doctor panicked, yelling, "we gotta get you out to the hospital!" The doctor in the "free-world," informed Medeon, he had a cocktail of medical issues; an enlarged spleen, elevated enzymes were attacking his liver, he had high blood pressure that he now takes medication for – and will for the rest of his life, and other high chemical levels subjecting him to a "constant struggle."
Medeon shook his head and referred to the hormone therapy as a "pilot experiment," where doctors and medical staff aren't really educated. "They're injecting us and not educating us either." Now that it's widely known medical staff injured his sciatic nerve, deteriorated his overall health, and botched his double mastectomy, "all of a sudden medical can't help us with nothing now." Bemused, I asked, "You had a botched mastectomy too? Wait a minute," I slowed him. "This is the headline."
Medeon received a double mastectomy, and was given many aftercare instructions by the surgeon. He needed antibiotics, anti-bacterial meds, gauze, and other basic wound care supplies.
My long-standing, light skinned, freckle-faced friend contracted a nasty infection in his left pectoral chest wall. He said "the wound opened, was exposed, and the medical staff did nothing." He got sick, came down with a high fever, and again, CCWf rushed him to the outside hospital.
Medeon received four days of antibiotics on a drip. He relived shock as he described how the outside medical staff blamed the infection on the testosterone therapy CCWf administered, and because he was complaining to CCWf, they blamed the predating health failures from 4 years of hormone therapy on the mastectomy.
For kicks, and to further shirk responsibility, Medeon recounted demeaning unnecessary exams where CCWf medical staff tested him for unrelated medical issues like Lyme disease to check the boxes and "cover their asses," as he is laying the groundwork for civil accountability.
Before we wrapped, Medeon said he was supposed to see surgeon Sattlewhite 4 times post care, the first 2 visits coming in 3-6 months, and then 1 year; 7 months passed, and no Sattlewhite. When he finally saw the surgeon, he said, "Sattlewhite was shocked I had an infection," asking him, "how come no one notified me?" Medeon said, "Sattlewhite was baffled when I told him half my nipple fell off, medical staff banned me from receiving scar cream, and now I have a horrible scar."
This whole medical debacle was proving to be "normal," as surgeons across the nation are all too familiar with this chronic aftercare problem. One surgeon, Dr. Erb Ellis, during an interview on the Grio about post-op care and risky surgeries, said "patients are taking risks in botched surgeries, where the patient is assuming the risk without full studies, as this is experimental, not qualified through long term evidence." Prison's Rights Director, Elizabeth Matos, stated, "wound care is a systemic problem nationwide." (The Grio 2023) Medeon seems content with Dr. Sattlewhite's word that he will rebuild his nipple.
As a prison lawyer, and friend, I encouraged Medeon to continue challenging the aptitude of inept medical staff; none of them can be trusted in this new world of experimental surgeries that leaves the lives of so many marginalized people in constant jeopardy. It's certainly exhausting fighting for medical integrity, women's rights, and my own rights to protect myself from male inmates masquerading as non-men given license to stalk, harass, taunt, and sabotage me; when I want the same protection they want.
Human Events has reviewed the medical records as well as Medeon's complaints and can confirm the infection after the double mastectomy, the directive from doctors for Medeon to stop taking testosterone after complications, and that Medeon reported not being given adequate information about the potential side effects from the cross-sex hormones.
