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December 12, 2006
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Lloyd Byron Martell lies on a bed in Dearborn's Oakwood Hospital, sets the disc player above the colostomy bag on his stomach and slides on the headphones. He shuts his eyes and smiles. For a minute or two, the old-school sounds of Sade make the world go away.
"Smooth operator," he sings, way off key. "Smoooooooth operator."
Then reality smacks him. He jerks up, coughing, spitting blood and phlegm into a plastic bowl. Waves of nausea run though him. His chest tightens, stomach spins, head pounds.
Martell's colon cancer has spread to his lungs. His weight is down from 224 to 180. At 41, he has six months, maybe a year, to live, says his oncologist, Dr. Parvez Khan.
Martell didn't have to go out like this. In 2004, driving on a suspended license, he fled from Redford police who tried to pull him over for a broken rear window. He got 1-4 years, but prison doctors effectively turned that short bit into a death sentence. Martell, of Detroit, was released in August to die.
His cancer could have been contained had the Michigan Department of Corrections treated it two years ago. But like hundreds of Michigan inmates, Martell got a double sentence: one handed down by the court and another executed by a deadly and dysfunctional prison health care system.
So now, once a week, the chemo drips into a port in Martell's chest and through a main artery, delivering the chemicals that kill his cells, cancerous and healthy alike, to prolong his life a few more months.
Sometimes he wonders if it's worth it. It would be easier just to pop OxyContin and ride out his last few months in a haze. Without chemo, though, the cancer could spread to his liver and brain.
"I don't want it to get any uglier, Dog," he tells me. Still, "every time I do this chemo, I wonder why. In the end, it's not going to change anything. I just want some time without throwing up, without pain, without doctors."
The cancer can be slowed, but the beast cannot be stopped.
The only time Martell cries is when he thinks of how things could have been.
"They killed me, with their evil, neglectful ways," he says.
Potentially curable if treated earlier
In December 2004, Martell had what he believed was a hemorrhoid lanced in prison. Medical records show it was actually a cancerous polyp. Dr. Jerome Wisneski, who works for Correctional Medical Services Inc., failed to treat it.
By October of last year, Martell was bleeding from the rectum and unable to walk. He was sent to Foote Hospital in Jackson, which contracts with CMS for specialty services. Doctors told him he had terminal cancer. In an oncology report, they noted that his cancerous polyp was not treated, though CMS spokesperson Amanda Brown said in an e-mail that Martell "received prompt care."
There are no guarantees with cancer, even with early intervention. But the earlier it's treated, the better. Martell's cancer was potentially curable when it was discovered two years ago.
Martell's case isn't the first that Wisneski botched. In 1996, he disregarded a bile leak in inmate Richard LeMarbe's abdomen, court records show. Another doctor later found 3 1/2 gallons of bile in LeMarbe's abdomen, causing serious damage that required several surgeries. In 2001, LeMarbe, now 73, and his attorney settled for $150,000 in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They would have gotten a lot more if LeMarbe, serving 25-50 years for second-degree murder, hadn't been an inmate.
Martell's attorney, Brian McKeen of Detroit, is suing Wisneski, the Department of Corrections and Correctional Medical Services Inc. for medical malpractice and constitutional violations. But Martell probably won't live to see the money. It will go to his mother, father and 6-year-old son, Loyal, who lives with his mother in Missouri.
"I won't be around to take care of my son," Martell says. "I don't want him to have to worry about anything."
An oasis of hope
Peacemakers International mission sits on Chene on Detroit's east side, surrounded by vacant lots, drug houses and empty, burned-out buildings. It's an oasis of hope, where the homeless, addicted and afflicted come to pick up the pieces of a broken life.
Martell has not come here to die, but to live.
He first came to Peacemakers four years ago. While driving down Gratiot, a stray .38-caliber hollow-point grazed the back of his head. The car's rear window and headrest slowed the bullet enough so that it just penetrated the surface of Martell's skull. Inside the mission, Martell pulled out the bullet and prayed.
The Rev. Steve Upshur -- "Pastor Steve" -- took him in. After Martell got out of prison in August, he came back to save his life again.
Upshur, 57, a maverick minister and former heroin addict, wears black denim, flowing gray curls and feathered earrings. His church works with drugs addicts, prostitutes and anyone who needs hope and love. Upshur figures that's what Jesus is all about.
"Pastor Steve always had the door open, even when I wasn't right," Martell says. He goes back and forth between a vacant house on the west side owned by his father and the Jesus House men's shelter run by Peacemakers International.
Martell spent his first few days out of prison with his mother, Donna Martin, in Dearborn. More than anyone else, Martin, 60, has been there for Martell when he was in prison and before. Still, the two fought when Martell was at her home. They agreed it was best that he stay somewhere else.
At the church mission, Martell found new peace. He had been running all his life, chasing the next high, whether it came from drugs, fighting or drag racing.
Bored with high school, Martell dropped out in his sophomore year, earned a GED and, at 19, became a diesel mechanic for the Detroit Department of Transportation. His father, Lloyd Byron Hill, also worked for DDOT and raced cars semiprofessionally, as did Martell.
Martell was smart and worked hard, often earning more than $1,000 a week as a mechanic, but he'd blow a lot of it on alcohol and drugs.
"I had problems with alcohol, drugs and my temper," Martell says. "But I got up and worked every day. My plan was to go back to the dealership and work as mechanic.
"Now all my dreams are shattered."
Martell gets $800 a month in disability from Social Security. Medicaid covers medical bills. Fresh out of prison, he was almost in a rage, but he has since let much of that anger go.
"I'm ready to die," he says. "I've made peace. There's no way I can carry all that anger around. That will kill you, too."
Telling his story has helped him heal. I watched him tell it, his voice raspy and raw, at a weekday service at Peacemakers a month ago. On Nov. 16, he told it again at a Lansing public hearing on prison health care sponsored by Prison Legal Services of Michigan and the American Friends Service Committee. He spoke from the heart and, when he finished, 100 people stood up and applauded.
"I'm just trying to save the next man," he says.
Martell's story and those of others like him, along with public pressure, have made a difference. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has ordered a review of the prison health care system and a federal judge has also ordered changes.
Martell's body is failing but, somehow, he feels free. He can't save the world or even his own life, but he's trying to make things better for others.
There's no better way to live or die.
JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer. Contact him at gerritt@freepress.com or 313-222-6585.
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.