I Need A Change

Seems like lately my life has become so routine it's like I'm stuck in suspended animation! Day in, day out the same thing. Since I no longer go to work everyday like I did for 30 years straight I sometimes feel totally useless like my life has no purpose. God cured my cancer and kept me around for some reason, I just haven't figured out what it is yet, but I need to do something besides just sit around the house. Thought about getting involved in helping with a Scout Troop again, but not sure if my body can stand it. I really do have limitations due to my spine being so brittle as a result of the cancer. I need to do something though so that I feel like a productive member of society again. Well, enough said, until next time!

My 2008 ARRL Field Day Experience

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

I had a great time working 2008 ARRL Field Day with all my friends in the K4KQ North Carolina Contest Group. I had fun at Field Day 08, we only had 40 CW contacts though, the rig I was on was a Kenwood TS-450S with no filtering at all and that made it really tough!I did get some traffic handling experience as I passed 14 formal messages including the one to the Division Section Manager for 200 bonus points altogether! Had 23 hams show up plus the ARRL Norfolk Division Section Manager Tim Slay N4IB visited and by K4RLD Bob DeWitt, District Emergency Coordinator for ARES Area Thirteen of the Western Branch of North Carolina . We had 2 stations on HF and one station on 6 meters and above. Bradley WZ4C worked south Texas off a LEO Low Earth Orbit satellite and a Hawaii station on 40 meters using a multiband vertical antenna, but we mostly used the wire antennas. A severe thunderstorm stopped operations for about 2 hours. Talk about getting field experience under adverse conditions! It hailed, hard wind gusts blew down trees to the North of us and there was a power outage, but we were on generators anyway so it didn't stop us after the rain and lightning receded and the 1000 foot loop and the 260 feet dipole hung in there. We sat in the RV and a camper and the RV I sat in rocked from the wind gusts! WZ4I Mark and Bradley WZ4C were prepared and all the equipment tables were covered with tarps and worked well. I made it til 6 AM this morning and was so tired I came home and went to bed.I'm just thankful it wasn't 95 degrees with 90% humidity! It was 70 last night after the storm that blessed us with much needed 2 inches of rain.
73 de Cliff KU4GW SKCC#652

Mickey Mouse & Me - "A Story of Two Miracles"

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Back when I was going through chemotherapy for treatment of multiple myeloma (bone marrow) cancer last year my wife brought a little Chihuahua Feist mix dog home to me and I named him Mickey Mouse. My feet would about kill me with pain caused by peripheral neuropathy, a side effect of the chemo drugs. They would hurt so bad that I would soak them in hot water and then have the wife rub them down in Bengay and they still hurt, but not as bad. Anyway, the first thing Mickey did when she brought him home was he would lie on my feet. He would get them real warm and they would almost stop hurting completely. I told Irene that I thought God sent him to me. Then, not long after I had Mickey he got very sick and would start shaking from side to side and slobbering. He took it by spells. Eventually he got so he couldn't walk 3 steps without falling down or falling into the wall. I had to physically hold him up to keep him from falling into his water bowl when he drank. I took him to the veterinarian and the vet diagnosed him with hydrocephalus (water on the brain). He told me I could take Mickey to a specialist, but he may not be able to help him either. I didn't have the money to take him to Charlotte to the specialist, so I prayed for God to heal him. After I had my stem cell transplant in August at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem and was back at home in recovery, on the 30th day of October they telephoned me and told me all my tests showed I was now cancer free. The very same day Mickey got better and has been better ever since then. He is wide open and I love that little dog. I still think he was a gift from God. He is my best friend. He sleeps with me every night and he is so warm! The cancer I had was multiple myeloma (bone marrow cancer) and according to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation it is an incurable cancer. I believe with all my heart that God answered my prayers and that he healed both Mickey and me.

**UPDATE** - MARCH 9, 2018 - It is with much sadness I must report I had to have Mickey euthanized this evening at Stony Point Animal Clinic in Stony Point, NC. He came down with a terrible hacking cough 3 days ago on March 6th that was so bad and loud you couldn't stand to be in the same room with him! The veterinarian wanted to do a chest x-ray because she said his gums looked grey which was a indicator of a lack of oxygen. She came back and told me one side of his heart was very enlarged and wasn't pumping right so he wasn't getting enough oxygen. Mickey also had a heart murmur he'd had his entire life. You could hear his heart murmur without even trying when lying in bed at night in a quiet room. I asked her if that could be the reason he has always had such a bad itching problem and dry skin. He would take his paws and rub the sides of his mouth and cry out in agony from it. She said it's possible because he hasn't been getting the right amount of oxygen. The poor little guy has suffered with that his entire life! She told me she could give him up to 10 pills a day to reduce the swelling in his heart, but it could get expensive, money I just don't have anyway, and even after doing that every day and it may come right back or he may smother to death over the weekend if it didn't help him so I told her to put him to sleep so he wouldn't have to suffer anymore. I left before they ethahanized him because I told the vet I wanted to remember seeing him alive and not how he looked after passing away. Mickey was 11 years old and was a wonderful companion to me. After today I've made up my mind that after the rest of the dogs I own pass on I am never getting another one because unfortunately God didn't make them live as long as humans do so getting one and then falling in love with it is just setting yourself up for heartbreak. I've had more than my share of that already after going through what I did to defeat stage 3 multiple myeloma and then going through losing my dear wife of 27 years when she passed away at only 48 years old from a pulmonary embolism 6 years ago as of March 24, 2018. I know one thing that's a fact. God sure has given me more than my share of tribulations in the soon to be 57 years I'll have been alive on this Earth as of May 10, 2018!