Memoirs of a Flower Child - George S Geisinger (the best books to read txt) 📗

cars as possible to make the money.
Eventually, I got another job. The chances of causing an accident at those speeds were just more than I could abide by. There's got to be someone somewhere who stands for responsible driving.
Last I checked, that company looked like they closed up shop. I'm certain the operation still goes on somehow, but the lots we were working, down by the airport, were empty.

My Right Hip
Chapter 12

I was less than 60 years of age, needing to take medicine for a chronic medical condition for the past 40 years, when I finally got confused about how the doctor wanted me to take the pills, how many of each I had already taken when I was in the process of taking them, and so on, until I was overdosing myself daily for better than a week without realizing it.
The tell-tale sign I could not understand at the time was that I was losing consciousness nightly, finding myself fallen prostrate on the floor for several hours running, on a nightly basis, unable to get up on my feet at all. I just laid on the floor all night, night after night. To make matters worse, I was living alone.
My one saving grace in this state of affairs was that I had left the hot water running all night the first night I passed out, flooding my entire apartment with a thin film of hot water everywhere, along with the adjacent apartment, such that my landlord was summoned by the neighbors to fix the problems cause by the flood. He had his work cut out for him, fixing all the problems. It caused him great inconvenience and great expense, coming day after day with his helpers, only to discover me flat on the floor, day after day, unable to get myself up without help, every day for better than a week.
One of his daily helpers was strong enough and young enough to lift me to my feet, but the lifting was a daily occurrence that knew no resolution.
My landlord finally lost his temper with me when I ultimately refused to get into the ambulance he had called for me, and threatened to evict me if he found me on the floor just one more time. There happened to be a social worker there at my apartment at that moment, by some sort of beckoning I am still unaware of, and between the social worker and my landlord, I was convinced to get in the ambulance and go to the hospital for help.
I had been so unwilling to go there, because I had already been going to the ER frequently enough, and had been turned away each time, after being screened as usual and told I was OK, and sent home without getting any help at all. But that particular time was the charm. They admitted me for observation, and finally came up with a diagnosis. It was determined, as I've said, that I'd been overdosing on my medicines for quite some time, and needed to be detoxed from all my medicines completely for several weeks, before I could be medicated at all, afterward.
I was kept in the hospital, then transferred to a nursing/rehab facility for treatment and supervision while I was going through the process of detox. It was a very dangerous process, considering my need for constant medication for my life-long, chronic problem, but the only recourse for my recovery was to take me off all medicines for several weeks, regardless of the perils involved. It was their only recourse to really help me.
I found that the OD effected some very noticeable brain functions, like my memory and my speech, for instance. In fact, my entire communication center in my brain totally shut down for a considerable length of time, and I was utterly unable to communicate, talk or write coherently at all, for a considerable length of time.
It was terrifying.
My power of attorney was summoned, and made arrangements to get me into an assisted living community, after my insurance coverage for the nursing/rehab facility was exhausted, and I was installed there at assisted living by the single handed help of my loyal, capable power of attorney.
The assisted living facility was nice enough, though small in size and taking care of a rather small census of residents, even so, it was relatively new and well kept, and comfortable enough for my needs. My acceptance by my peers, as you might call them, although I was easily young enough to be the son of any of the other residents, was especially tenuous because of the unfortunate fact that I could not communicate. It was extremely awkward for me at the time.
Nonetheless, I fumbled along, enjoying my private room and excellent meals, prepared by chefs, no less; not to be confused with the usual staff of cooks in other institutional facilities. Those guys really knew how to make the most delightful meals. I enjoyed each one with unmasked enthusiasm, lavishing the head chef with compliments, and faithfully looked forward to getting my medication accurately, finally tumbling to the fact that I had been overdosing myself so dangerously before I'd gone to the hospital.
I had been in such total denial of my confusion for such a long time, until I finally understood that I had nearly lost my life in the process of talking my medications wrongly, not understanding how to take my medications correctly at all anymore. I was thinking that my loss of brain function had been due to the detox process, but I finally tumbled to the idea that taking me completely off all my medications in order to detox my system, was the solution, not the problem.
I may be restricted to needing someone else to administer my medications indefinitely, but it's better than forfeiting my life over it.
But to return to the narrative, I was in the assisted living facility for a relatively short period of time, when a very strange thing happened to me.
I was walking in the main hallway with my cane, which I had been in the habit of using to help me with my balance, when all of a sudden I found myself in a dream. Yes, that's right. I was walking and lapsed into a dream. From the way I remember it, I was dreaming I was the first human being to discover how to fly without the aid of an aircraft. It was a very novel concept.
The next thing I knew was that I opened my eyes, coming wide awake suddenly, and noticed myself in an advanced stage of falling, with no recourse to cushion the fall. I was going down, falling and falling, and there was nothing I could do about it. I hit my head on a wall twice on the way down, and landed very violently on my right side, causing the most excruciating pain throughout my entire body – the worst pain I had ever had in my entire lifetime.
The nurse arrived quickly from her office or wherever she was, but the ambulance crew seemed to take forever to get there, and even the slightest motion gave me such pain I was screaming uncontrollably. Though the paramedics, arriving at long last, were careful to strap me down to a solid board as gently and carefully as they could, I was still so frightened that I would be in so much pain, that I continued to scream until I arrived at the ER in the ambulance, and thought the medical people finally understood how badly I was hurting, so that I final suppressed my screams, but could not avoid my moaning and groaning at every turn.
Unfortunately, the ER people were completely powerless to help me that evening, in any way at all. I could not give any indication where I might be hurt specifically, because I still couldn't talk, and they simply sent me back home to assisted living in an ambulance, just as I had been brought to them earlier. I have no quarrel with the ER about that visit, though. No quarrel whatsoever. I hurt all over, and could not give any description of any kind about my fall to the ER staff, since my communication skills were still so bad at the time. It wasn't their fault they couldn't take any xrays. They had no idea where to point the camera.
All they had to go on was the idea that I had fallen, had been doing a lot of screaming, moaning and groaning, but could not give any coherent accounting of my fall or tell them anything about where I hurt more specifically.
Well, I was taken home and put to bed, where I slept all night, flat on my back, which was the least uncomfortable position I could find. Waking early the next morning, I knew exactly where I hurt. It was my right hip really giving me a fit, no doubt about it, and I had had enough of screaming about it. I was taken back to the ER for xrays, and sent right back home again afterward, and was soon informed that I had broken my right hip.
I figured as much.
Back to the hospital I went, to be operated on.
The orthopedic surgeon came visiting several times, and was a bright young man, and a very personable, quite reassuring, brilliant young man. He came to see me several times before the surgery, and won my complete confidence. He told me his job in an operating room was to “fix bones.” And I believed that he would be very good at it, too. What's more is, I've found that he was, indeed very good at his job, no doubt about it.

There had been this girl in her early 20's who had thrown herself at me, as the expression has it, ever since I had shared about the demise of my dear mother in a public group gathering some two years earlier. She had manipulated her way into my life with tearful complaint that she had lost her father when she was only 12 years old, and would I please be her daddy.
Well, I had never had a wife or daughter, had just lost my mother, who had always been the most significant person in my life, and here I was being offered a “daughter figure,” out of the clear blue. I had accepted the request gladly, since she seemed to be sincere, with all the emotional display, and was a very attractive young lady besides. She spent two and a half years introducing herself publicly to everyone I knew and talked to, as being my “adopted daughter.” I internalized the expression, because our informal agreement was defined in that way in the first place.
I was to be her “daddy,” and labored against the fact that I was sexually attracted to her at first, the way she wore dip necklines and such. At great length, after she had called me on the telephone nightly at 3 or 4 AM on a nightly basis for months on end, while I sat up and crocheted in the middle of the night next to the phone. I finally realized how immature she was, and gave up all ambition to have her as a sex partner under any circumstances. She had always maintained there was too much of an age difference between us for her to be attracted to me that way anyhow, but my own feels would not let up for