It's been awhile

[KA9MOT]

Hello this is Steve it's been awhile since I checked in with y'all. I've had some medical issues past 2 years and a I've been unable to do much. So my health is finally getting better an I'm able to get into the shack and get back to some of my old hobbies.

I lost a foot in June of 2019. I struggled with the stuff until June of 2020, it never healed which created some major problems.
I was not hospital about 7 times do to sepsis and was in a nursing home for 6 months. I came home December 2019 an stayed home until June 2020.
The stump from that foot never healed, it continued to get infected and I would end up with sepsis and back in the hospital. All the hospital trips, all the CAT scans and MRIs, and the chemicals they put in your body to do it CAT in cost me my kidneys.
I wasted a year, not being able to walk and struggling to recover.
While I was in the nursing home in August 2019, I lost my wife. 40 years old and she just dropped dead......no warning and all alone. My friend Scott KC9SIW found her the following day, with my German Shepherd laying at her feet whining and then trying to protect her, when anybody got close.
In April 2020 my baby brother Curtis, crawled up in his sleeper and didn't wake up. they found him 3 days later. It is thought that he had a stroke.
In May 2020 my brother Robert, a career Marine and fitness fanatic had a stroke and died. He was 1 year younger than me.
In June 202 the infection in my foot was so bad they did a Below The Knee amputation on my left leg. My kidneys had failed for good this time and I've been on dialysis 3 days a week since then.

Today, I'm back to struggling and not being able to pay my bills, my I am healthier than I have been in years. I feel great, as long as I don't miss a dialysis treatment, and I'm happy. I'm learning how to use my prosthetic leg and I really have no complaints.

So hopefully in the future I'll get back into posting in these forums. It was a long swim back to the Island...........

[N8YX]

Damn, Steve...that is a very long row to hoe but glad you're doing better.

We lost George ('AMR) around this time last year. Suddenseer has been quiet for a while - hope he's still with us.

[kb2vxa]

Well Steve, according to AJ YOU'RE a majority! You're in the club now, like Audie Murphy you've been to Hell and back, and you're living proof the song is spot on, it says you've got to go through Hell before you get to Heaven. I know where you're coming from, thanks to smoking I have heart problems so I have a pacemaker with a defibrillator, peripheral artery disease that put me in a wheelchair, was laid up with Covid 19 for 4 weeks, and am in a nursing home I probably will not leave alive. I have no family and fewer friends As Time Goes By, play it again Sam. (Dooley Wilson at the piano) Hey, if it makes you feel any better, remember there is always someone who has it worse than you, but what about the LAST guy? Nobody has it worse than that guy! (Credit to Arlo Guthrie.)

All that having been said, Welcome Back Cotter... Steve. BTW I knew that kid in the upper right corner when he lived in Metuchen, NJ.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZzEzDkeHzI

[KG4CGC]

Prayers and good vibes, brother.

[PA5COR]

^ that, talk about bad luck in life, feeling suddenly healthy with just a stent in the ticker...
Stay healthy, welcome back on the Island.

[WZ7U]

Damn Steve, you've been through it. It's good to see you well enough to want to mess with typing and thanks for using that energy to get back across the bay to the best Island in the world. Stay safe my friend.

[W3WN]

Welcome Back, Steve. Your presence has been missed.

Am sorry to hear about your difficulties (to put it mildly), of course.

[ad4mg]

Welcome back, Steve. I, too, am sorry to hear of your struggles. We all must deal with what life throws at us, but it doesn't always seem fair. All we can do is keep fighting.

Keep fighting, man. Hope to see you around here more often.

[kb2vxa]

I just remembered something, you don't have to be Irish to be a fighter. Here's a song for you Steve, and all the fighters out there!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEqniZcaU6Y

[KA9MOT]

Damn, Steve...that is a very long row to hoe but glad you're doing better.

We lost George ('AMR) around this time last year. Suddenseer has been quiet for a while - hope he's still with us.

Thank you. Damn...AMR an maybe Suddenseetr.....that sux.

[KA9MOT]

Well Steve, according to AJ YOU'RE a majority! You're in the club now, like Audie Murphy you've been to Hell and back, and you're living proof the song is spot on, it says you've got to go through Hell before you get to Heaven. I know where you're coming from, thanks to smoking I have heart problems so I have a pacemaker with a defibrillator, peripheral artery disease that put me in a wheelchair, was laid up with Covid 19 for 4 weeks, and am in a nursing home I probably will not leave alive. I have no family and fewer friends As Time Goes By, play it again Sam. (Dooley Wilson at the piano) Hey, if it makes you feel any better, remember there is always someone who has it worse than you, but what about the LAST guy? Nobody has it worse than that guy! (Credit to Arlo Guthrie.)

All that having been said, Welcome Back Cotter... Steve. BTW I knew that kid in the upper right corner when he lived in Metuchen, NJ.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZzEzDkeHzI


Damn Warren. I'm sorry to hear of your suffering. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. You hear some kid talking about how they suffered and you think, "You aint seen nothing yet!" and then I think about those who are suffering more than I.
I went back into the hospital (and got a ride in a HELICOPTER!!!!) on Monday. More heart problems, but I am proving to be hard to kill and today I spent 4 hours with my aid Katie running around town and shopping and wheeled my fat ass everywhere we went. I'm gaining my strength back, and had a ball.
I really hope you have the opportunity to get out and about and I truly wish you lived closer...Katie and I would come visit....and you aint seen Katie yet...OMG! What a hottie!

[KA9MOT]

Prayers and good vibes, brother.

Thank you for the vibes man!

[KA9MOT]

Prayers and good vibes, brother.

OH HELL! I forgot we had a bartender!

[KA9MOT]

^ that, talk about bad luck in life, feeling suddenly healthy with just a stent in the ticker...
Stay healthy, welcome back on the Island.

I got my first stent in 2000......do what you can do to stay healthy. I don't want you to end up like me. Thank you for the kind words.

[KA9MOT]

Damn Steve, you've been through it. It's good to see you well enough to want to mess with typing and thanks for using that energy to get back across the bay to the best Island in the world. Stay safe my friend.

Thank you for the kind words Eric. It's good to be back.

[KA9MOT]

Welcome Back, Steve. Your presence has been missed.

Am sorry to hear about your difficulties (to put it mildly), of course.

Thank you for the kind words Ron. It's good to be back. I keep facing my difficulties and winning, so you'll hear no complaints from me. :) I am a happy fat boy!

[KA9MOT]

Welcome back, Steve. I, too, am sorry to hear of your struggles. We all must deal with what life throws at us, but it doesn't always seem fair. All we can do is keep fighting.

Keep fighting, man. Hope to see you around here more often.

Thank you for the kind words Luke. It's good to be back. I'm going to try to get into the shack more often (that's where my computer lives). You guys ever think about a Ham Island, Misfits Net? Last Saturday, my brother, nephew and Randy KD9SHA came by and helped me get an antenna up. Everything I had came down over the last 2 years, so I built a Half Wave Endfed (EFHW) Antenna and they got it up for me, so I'm back on the air.........

[KA9MOT]

I just remembered something, you don't have to be Irish to be a fighter. Here's a song for you Steve, and all the fighters out there!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEqniZcaU6Y

I like it! Thanks!

[KG4CGC]

Years ago we tried something in the evening hours on 80m. I was barely able to pull out our friends out west, Dave and Carl.
I was a chore straining to hear them. Had my ear up to the speaker.
Spoke to our resident contester up in, Delaware? I don't want to get the location confused. Maryland?

[WØTKX]

Hi Steve. You and I used to hear each other pretty well. Hang in there.

[kb2vxa]

Steve, if you won't feel sorry about my problems I won't feel sorry about yours, negative emotions only make one feel worse. Like I said, we're fighters, nothing can keep a good ham down, cloves, a few spices, and honey glaze helps. Somehow I just knew you'd like the song, and you do, 4K You Tube to mp3 will download and save it for you. Heck, I've been keeping my guardian angel busy since I was a little tweaker, I came up with my boat anchor slogan "12 volts is for wimps, real radios can KILL you" for a reason, one nearly did. Actually it was my stupid design flaw and laziness that came together one fateful day changing tubes in a modulator that wasn't interlocked with the RF deck of my home brew pirate radio transmitter. After turning off the modulator, instead of removing some screws and sliding it forward out of the rack I reached around behind with the RF deck still feeding HV to the mod iron secondary, and my arm was jammed in solid. Thankfully a friend feeding in the kitchen ran in responding to my screams and hit the emergency disconnect button killing power to the room. Thankfully I remembered the ones in high school metal shop! The smell of burnt meat in the room was my arm, it hung limp for a couple of weeks until burned out nerves re-circuited. It didn't stop there, between pranks and installing antennas where monkeys won't go without safety equipment I should have died a thousand deaths! Darwin was wrong, it's not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the dumbest.

Charles, what you need is the best headset ever made, I had this pair of WW2 vintage cans I picked up NIB at a hamfester for $5 made of rubber with chamois cushions for comfort on long flights and 300 ohm Western Electric telephone transducers in series for 600 ohms, standard WW2 military line impedance. The beauty of today's audio output stages is transistors are current devices that hate lower than 3 ohm loads and short circuits, but they don't care about high impedance loads or no load at all. Just plugged into my Icom IC706Mk2G they shone like the sun pulling weak signals out of the noise without expensive DSP. After all, that's what they were designed for at 28,000ft in a B-29 with the radioman making sense of distant AM signals on crackling HF bands. There are all sorts of mil surplus phones kicking around, time to go shopping? If you pay more than $20 somebody's yanking your wing wang!

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