Life Sucks

The same month that he was incarcerated, Devia says, his regular headaches grew worse. He put in medical requests to see physicians at the prison.

Devia claimed that nurses advised him to buy Advil or Tylenol from the inmate canteen. Over-the-counter meds did little for his condition and, he says, at the start of 2005 the incision point for the previous surgeries began to open and swell.

He was bleeding regularly, and by April, pus had started to seep from the wound. In May, pieces of the prosthetic bone could pass through the dime-sized hole in his temple.

He wrote to Molina every day, telling her that he wasn't receiving adequate medical attention.

Then he started sending her what looked like slivers of sheetrock. He told her to keep the tiny pieces of skull as evidence.

At her house just north of Bannister Road, Molina digs out a large blue duffel bag. It's full of notes and drawings and crafts made from sock string and molded bread. She finds an envelope that rattles. Inside there's a small bone shard that looks like a dried-out baby tooth.

"You don't know how crazy it was to get that in the mail," she says.

CCA declined to comment on Devia's incarceration at Leavenworth. The U.S. Marshals Service pays CCA $81.69 per inmate per day; that price includes medical treatment within the facility. Steve Owen, a spokesman for CCA, tells the Pitch that the company is licensed by the American Correctional Association, which mandates the "highest, comprehensive set of standards" when it comes to health care.

Devia acknowledges that, on several occasions, prison workers took him to St. Joseph Medical Center in Leavenworth for tests and scans. They gave him antibiotics to counter the apparent infection. But their response, he says, was slow and sporadic.

In October 2005, Devia's attorney filed a motion for medical care, alleging that Devia's condition had worsened since he'd come under CCA's supervision. An assistant U.S. attorney shot back that Devia's claims against CCA were "misleading" and that Devia was awaiting a bone scan. U.S. Circuit Court Judge John Lungstrum dismissed the motion.

Marshals escorted Devia to the University of Kansas Medical Center in late December, where a neurosurgeon evaluated him. Months passed, and CCA never gave him the results from the KU tests. Finally, in February 2006, a doctor at St. Joseph confirmed what Devia suspected: His skull was infected.

Devia tried to protect his deteriorating scalp with Band-Aids. But in April, his infection caused a violent vomiting spell that required a trip to the emergency room at St. John's. The next month, Devia was shuttled back to the University of Kansas Hospital. There, the attending doctor, Ania Pollack, noted that she observed "seeping pus" and described Devia's condition as severe.

Devia says he pleaded with her to order emergency surgery. Instead, the marshals shipped him back to Leavenworth.

He'd been in prison for nearly two years. And he had yet to go to trial.

Back in Kansas City, Flor Devia began petitioning for international assistance, calling the Colombian consulate in Chicago and asking officials there to demand better medical care for her son.

"I was everyday crying," Flor says, sitting at the small card table in her second-floor apartment on the city's Northeast side. In the CCA visiting room each week, she says, "I would see little more, little more, little more swelling. Then it was his whole face."

One day, unexpectedly, Devia wasn't there when Molina and Flor went to visit.

On June 20, Devia says, two guards woke him before dawn. They took him to KU Hospital for an 8 a.m. surgery that would last more than seven hours.

According to Pollack's notes, the lesion on Devia's head had grown to the size of a quarter. She peeled back the skin and discovered scar tissue between the scalp and the skull. After scraping the area clean, she removed two screws that were holding the prosthetic bone in place and used a high-speed air drill to break it away from the skull.

"Underneath the bone flap, there were multiple areas that appeared gelatinous," she noted.

Several hours later, a plastic surgery team stitched up the wound and inserted a drain to discharge fluids.

Devia woke up under the watch of two federal marshals, bound to his hospital bed with cuffs at his hands and feet.

"I was in pain, 30 stitches in my head," Devia says. "I was like a mummy. I couldn't stand up or nothing."

According to medical records, KU physicians said that Devia would require six weeks of continuous IV infusions to root out the persistent infection in his skull. Just five days after the surgery, though, a nurse noted that she'd been in contact with CCA nurse Phyllis Warder and was told that "U.S. Marshall will not pay for patient to stay here for 6 weeks."

According to KU Hospital spokesman Dennis Minich, the cost of the hospital suite and nurse care alone rang up to $66,743.44 during Devia's two-week stay. That doesn't include the cost of the surgery itself, a figure the hospital declined to release. To date, the hospital has received one check from the feds for $6,887.47 for Devia's care.