On the mend

This blog has been silent for the past few weeks - quite frankly because I was kind of out of the loop as far as Amateur Radio was concerned. About a month ago the dreaded tendinitis flared up in my right foot again (old dog walking injury).  In order to keep pressure off the toes, I over compensated when I would walk, which unintentionally caused undue stress to my calf and hamstring muscles.  Needless to say, the tendinitis went away a lot quicker than the injuries I caused to my leg muscles.

The pain got so bad that I briefly considered a trip to the Emergency Room at the hospital; but opted for a regular office visit to my primary care physician.  A prescription of muscle relaxers seems to have done the trick and after about a week on them, I am almost walking normally again.

If any of you have never experienced a hamstring injury, let me tell ya - it's NOT fun! The muscles were so tight that every time I tried to bend my knee I felt like the muscle in the back of my thigh was either going to snap or tear.  When my doctor examined my leg, he told me the hamstring felt like it had a knot in it.

So what does this all have to do with Amateur radio?  A lot.

It was too painful to go downstairs to the basement shack, so I avoided the shack like the plague. And to be honest, walking around for the most part was such a pain that I didn't even feel like setting up the KX3 and magloop in the living room.  I was just so pre-occupied with discomfort that I literally had the air let out of my balloon for close to a month.  The routine became go to work, hobble on home, eat dinner, and then go to bed early to elevate my leg for as long as possible.

But now that things are starting to resemble some kind of normalcy, I hope to start bringing the KX3 to work with me for lunchtime QRP sessions as soon as next week.

It's amazing how you can lose interest in even your most favorite things in life when your brain is busy dealing with the nerves in your body telling it that something is wrong.

The only bright side that I can think of is that I didn't purchase Hamvention tickets for this past weekend.  I would have never been able to deal with all the necessary walking, and it would have been massively depressing to have the tickets in hand and then not be able to go.

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