MY RIKERS FOOD HELL
Fast meals nearly killed me: $80M suit
THIS FORMER FATSO couldn’t stomach jail.
Ex-inmate Michael Isolda is suing the city for $80 million, bellyaching that eating the cafeteria food at Rikers Island nearly killed him.
Isolda once tipped the scales at 460 pounds before undergoing gastric bypass surgery. The operation slimmed him down, but he claims prison dining — in which inmates have only four minutes to finish their meals — endangered his digestive system.
The Staten Island resident said he needed extra time to chew and swallow food, but the speed-eating at Rikers caused him to vomit after every meal and eventually separated his stomach from his intestine.
“For me, Rikers Island is a death sentence,” Isolda said in a sworn statement that’s part of the lawsuit he filed in Brooklyn Federal Court this week. “It’s not a matter of surviving and worrying about inmates. I have to worry about the food killing me.”
Isolda was beset by diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea and orthopedic problems when he decided to have gastric bypass surgery in 2008.
Patients who undergo the procedure shed hundreds of pounds since their stomach size is dramatically reduced and they can no longer eat the same portions of food.
Isolda said patients learn quickly how much they can consume.
“It’s called dumping syndrome,” he explained. “Like the Staten Island dump . . . you vomit depending on if you could handle the food or if you can’t handle the food.”
A self-described “good, old Italian boy” who loves pasta, Isolda was arrested in 2010 for possession of painkillers and sentenced to a drug treatment program. Isolda’s weight was down to 160 pounds in March 2011 when he tested positive for oxycodone and was thrown back in jail.
His surgeon submitted a letter to the sentencing judge, Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Leonard Rienzi, noting that “due to the small stomach pouch the patient takes longer to chew his food or vomiting may occur or food may be lodged in the esophagus,” according to court papers. The judge ordered the letter attached to Isolda’s commitment papers when he was sentenced to 30 days.
Isolda said he needs 15 to 30 minutes to safely consume soft food like mashed potatoes, tuna or oatmeal.
The cafeteria at the Otus Bantum Correctional Center at Rikers Island didn’t have much variety to its menu. Breakfast was either cereal, oatmeal or toast with jelly. Lunch was sandwiches with two different kinds of cold cuts and beef stew for dinner. Milk and Kool-Aid were offered at all meals.
Isolda said he never saw a nutritionist and only had about four minutes to finish eating before guards cleared his row to make room for the next wave of hungry inmates.
“If you tell the guard you’re not done yet, they’ll cuff you and bring you to ‘The Hole,’ ” Isolda told the Daily News, using a slang term for solitary confinement.
Isolda said his shrunken stomach couldn’t handle the time constraints, causing him to vomit violently after every meal in the clink.
The lawsuit says his tummy troubles came to a head on March 27, 2011, when he awoke in his cell unable to breathe and gripped by severe pain. His stomach had separated from his intestine, and he was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he underwent lifesaving surgery.
Isolda’s lawyer, Robert Adinolfi, said his client is still struggling to get his life back together.
“He’s very depressed. He looks like a Holocaust survivor,” Adinolfi said.
Isolda’s wife, Jessica, is also a plaintiff and claims she and her hubby haven’t had sex since the emergency surgery.
“When he had come home he had an open incision and because of that, the infection, we weren’t able to be intimate,” Jessica Isolda said last month in a sworn statement.
City Correction Department spokeswoman Robin Campbell said “DOC policy and practice affords all inmates adequate time to eat each meal.
“All inmates have both daily routine and emergency access to medical care to make their needs known,” she added.