Turning a Corner & Random Sample

Good news on Steve and Julie’s mom! Both are doing much better. Steve had surgery on Wednesday to put a temp pin to hold his collar bone in place while it heals. According to the doctor, the break was “complicated” and required a lot of time to properly place the pin in. After 3 hours, they finally finished and my mom got a call from the doctor on her cell. Why the doctor couldn’t talk to us in the waiting room is unknown, but she did let us know right after surgery. Big relief! Because Steve has insurance that has a high co-pay for hospital stays, he opted to recover at my parent’s place. My dad and I drove him home and he was pretty woozy from the drugs and not eating for 27 hours. It took about 20 minutes to get him into the house, because he broke out in a cold sweat and had to sit down or risk passing out. My dad got a chair and sat him down right there on the driveway. My mom got a towel and dabbed the sweat from his face, neck and head. Finally, he was able to stand and I helped him into the house and to the couch. After two glasses of apple juice, some scrambled eggs, toast and some pain pills, he felt a lot better. I got home at 12:45am and passed out. It was a long and stressful day. My mom was there the whole time (11am to 10:30pm) and went home after getting the good news and checking in with Steve. My sister was there for a good chunk of the day, too. All that sitting and waiting = stress, and there was a lot of it to go around. I think by the time I got there, my mom’s nerves were pretty frayed.

I called Steve yesterday, and he said he slept really well and was feeling okay. Whew!

Julie’s mom is doing much better as well. She was having a bad reaction to some combination of drugs that left her pretty unmotivated to do much. The doctors took her off the one of the meds and she’s doing much, much better. She walking around, in a much more agreeable mood, and motivated to get well and get out of the hospital and start living a normal life again. Yay! You can read Julie’s update HERE.

And now…The weekly “Random Sample.”

“Change of Heart” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Download) I was going through some old 45s, and this one was in those “back stacks of wax.” If you’ve been going over to Popdose for the Mix Six, you’ll know that I featured the b-side to this song in last week’s mix.

“Dumpweed” Blink 182 (Download) A band whose humor is that of a typical 8th grade boy, but whose drummer drums with a furious, but mature, style.

“3 Ghost I” Nine Inch Nails (Download) You know you’re getting old when Nine Inch Nails releases an album of instrumental tunes that are kind of, well, pleasant. NIN is offering part of this album as a free download and you can also buy the full album (and then some) for a pretty cheap price. But wait, there’s more! Fellow Popdoser and bloggy friend, Taylor, wrote a good review of the album — which you can read HERE.