Son dying, but doctor wouldn't talk to her:  Even during visits, mother kept in dark

State worker Francine Wright learned that her son, Darnell Anderson, had been hospitalized only after the girlfriend of another inmate called.

It was the same day she received a letter in which her son told her he might be HIV-positive:

"I've been feeling really bad," he wrote in December 2004. "... Please try to get over here and see me as soon as possible."

Anderson was serving a four-year drug sentence when he was taken to Wilmington's St. Francis Hospital Dec. 16. During his hospitalization, doctors learned Anderson had pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, an AIDS-related infection that is preventable and treatable when caught early.

Wright, however, did not know where her son was or what was wrong.

A week after Anderson was hospitalized, a guard called Wright to tell her that her son's health had worsened, and he was in intensive care. He was about 50 pounds lighter, hooked up to a breathing machine and sedated, said Wright -- who had to arrange all hospital visits through the prison.

"I could not just go visit," she said.

Wright said she tried to find out what was wrong with her son, but no one would tell her -- not even the prison physician, Dr. Muhammed Niaz.

"One day a guard said to me he was getting tired of hearing that the doctors wouldn't talk," Wright said. "He said, 'Miss, enough is enough. I want you to call the warden and get clearance for the doctors to talk to you.' "

Wright contacted the deputy warden, who supposedly cleared doctors to talk to her. But Niaz would still not talk to her, she said.

In medical records acquired by The News Journal, Niaz wrote: "His family was tried to be reached, as his condition was essentially reaching a more vegetative state, and there was no one to talk to in the family about his condition."

According to Department of Correction spokeswoman Beth Welch, if the correction department cannot reach an inmate's designated contact, the inmate's file is researched for other contact information.

But the doctor's note was written a month after Wright began visiting her son in the hospital. She visited him from about Dec. 22 through Jan. 19 -- the day before he died.

Niaz, who has worked in Delaware prisons for 10 years under different contractors, would not talk about Anderson's case because of confidentiality laws. But he said that he cannot speak to families of inmates unless the Department of Correction approves. "If the DOC gives the permission to talk to the family, then definitely we can talk to the family," he said.

Wright said she should have been informed of her son's condition: "He's someone's child. He had a mother. He had a father. He had a family."