Last few days have been a blur

and here it is Tuesday, and I am getting my first chance to take a breath.

I awoke Sunday morning at 5:00 AM as is my usual time. My wife Marianne got up at the same time, which is unusual for a Sunday. She didn't look well and she admitted she didn't feel well.  About eight years ago, she first suffered an attack of cardiac arrhythmia.  It comes back from time to time, but generally goes away on its own after only a few minutes. Sunday morning, it came back with a vengeance. It was bad, and it wasn't going away. Adrenaline starts to kick in when you see that look of panic in your spouse's eyes.

Without objection, I whisked her off to the hospital, which probably wasn't the smartest idea. Calling 911 would have been the wiser course, but then you have to wait for the police and ambulance to arrive. It seemed quicker to just drive her there. At 5:00 AM, I was one of very few cars on the road, and we were at the hospital in less than 10 minutes. Once there, she was immediately taken care of by the Emergency Room doctors, nurses and technicians. They did an outstanding job! Her heart rate was brought down from 165 to around 110 within minutes, and a few hours later she was back in normal sinus rhythm and had a heart rate in the low 80s.

There was a little worrying going on, on my part, as a stress test was ordered for yesterday morning. Positive results of blockages would have resulted in a cardiac catheterization. Fortunately, by the grace of God, the results proved negative and I was able to bring my lovely wife home last night. She is feeling much better and is back where she belongs - with her family.

Marianne is on some new meds, in addition to what she had been taking. A blood thinner and an anti-arrhythmic are new. Hopefully, it will be a long time, or perhaps never before we have a return episode.  I guess it's human nature for very dark thoughts to enter your mind when stuff like this happens. That's when faith kicks in and you just have to put things in the Hands of the God when you feel like there's nothing else you can do.

So here it is, Tuesday, and while I have been off the air, I see that the ionosphere has gone kablooey. Severe geomagnetic disturbances have been rendering the HF bands nil, from reports that I have been reading. Supposedly, there will be a good chance to see aurora tonight, even this far south - but of course, we're looking at clouds, rain and thunderstorms tonight - so I guess not.

Hopefully, ol' Sol will get his act together for this coming weekend. It's Field Day and we need some good propagation. The terrestrial weather is not looking great either, with rain being forecasted for the entire weekend. But we'll have tents, so I would rather have good solar weather than terrestrial weather. I can deal with rain - geomagnetic storms or no propagation would be a disaster.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

Band conditions were as lousy as expected. No signals heard on 6, 10, 12, 15, or 17 Meters. I did have a brief QSO with Rob, W8BUJ on 14.061 MHz. At the beginning, he was 599 and I received a 579 in return. The QSB monster put a quick end to our QSO. The bands are nothing or volatile.