The journey that began in earnest in December 1968 with me glued to a black-and-white TV set culminated in part on November 7, 2007, aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Orbital mechanics dictated that upon completion of my first jaunt into outer space—five months on the International Space Station—I must now face the prospect of my first homecoming from outer space. After 151 days in microgravity, Discovery’s touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center was scheduled for the late morning hours of November 7.
Prepping for landing day is almost as hectic as launch day and orbital insertion. There are so many things that must be completed to get everything (and everyone) ready for coming home. Equipment used during the mission must be carefully packed for return to Earth. When NASA says “packed” they mean packed; equipment must be stowed in such a manner as to avoid any damage upon return to Earth’s gravitational field or from the hard thump of the orbiter’s main landing gear when the tires strike the Shuttle Landing Facility’s fifteen-thousand-foot-long concrete landing surface.
That morning the crew awakened on schedule, downed a quick breakfast, and donned navy blue cotton long underwear made by Patagonia. The long underwear was comfortable against our skin and performed the critical function of covering our maximum absorbency garments, more commonly known as diapers.
Heavier, less comfortable liquid-cooling garments would be put on at the very last possible minute over our diapers and long underwear. Over everything we would wear our Advanced Crew Escape System (ACES) spacesuits. The highly visible and recognizable orange “pumpkin” suits serve as our first level of protection in the event of a high-altitude emergency bailout like that contemplated by the crew of the Columbia tragedy.
The crew was busy on the flight deck checking the shuttle’s navigational systems, test-firing her reaction control system jets and manipulating all her hydraulically controlled aerodynamic surfaces—parts absolutely critical to the “one shot only” entry of this 215,000-pound spaceship, a hunk of tiles, insulation, and metal that must land with the lift of an aircraft. Just prior to landing, all jets are turned off and the shuttle must land as a glider. And with no go-arounds, there’s only one opportunity to do so safely.
Flambo, Longbow, and Husk-Bo were packing up sleeping bags, experiments, trash—all the supplies and hardware—before the final thrust of the orbital maneuvering system (OMS) engines that would slow us down enough so gravity could gently tug us back into the Earth’s atmosphere. (STS-120 was known as the “Bo” crew. Led by Commander Pam “Pambo” Melroy and pilot George “Zambo” Zamka, all crewmembers adopted “Bo” call signs for the mission: Doug “Wheels” Wheelock became Flambo for his difficulty lighting a fire in the rain, Scott “Longbow” Parazynski for his height, Stephanie “Robo” Wilson for her robotic arm genius, Dan “Bo-ichi” Tani for his Asian heritage, Paolo “Rocky” Nespoli because no one could think of a good Italian “Bo” name, and yours truly became “Husk-Bo” for my home state.)
Still, we managed to find time for zero-gravity play as we worked in the middeck. The gravitationally liberated Sony video camera was passed back and forth, videotaping “stupid astronaut tricks” as we launched M&Ms across the living quarters toward mouths stretched to their limits hoping for a successful capture of the tasty candies.
We gathered and filled drink bags for each crewmember, readying us for the process called fluid loading. Required of astronauts on entry day, fluid loading tops off the fluids in your vestibular and blood pressure systems. Taking in salt tablets and fluids on landing day helps you better withstand and respond to a force it hasn’t experienced in quite some time—gravity.
After a couple of weeks in space, your systems learn that it takes less effort to push blood “up” into your brain than when you were back on the Earth’s surface. With your bodily systems essentially running on idle, gravity has no trouble pulling blood away from your head and down to your feet. The results are potentially disastrous.
Being a rookie astronaut, my knowledge of the fluid loading process was purely theoretical. My choice of beverages to load on landing day was based on an earthbound set of taste buds and included hot chicken broth (two bags—a big mistake), followed by purple grape drink and ending with tropical punch. The fruit drinks were artificially sweetened, as sugar diminishes the body’s ability to retain liquids, thereby lessening the benefit of fluid loading. Since my size and weight dictated that I needed sixty-four ounces of fluid over a two-hour period, I followed up my tasty combination of liquids with plain old iodinated water and the remaining mandatory salt tablets. The process began with a call from our commander to “initiate fluid loading.” I was not prepared for the ramifications of that simple directive.
The choice of chicken broth stemmed from taste-testing sessions on the ground where it tasted like a bowl of Mom’s chicken soup. In space the salty chicken taste was not nearly as appealing.
When Pambo called for us to load our second bag, I wasn’t even half finished with the first one and I still had purple grape drink, tropical punch, and water to get down. Fluid loading was not as easy as I’d thought it would be.
With our preparatory tasks completed and three seats reinstalled in the middeck, our focus turned to the upcoming OMS burn.
Critical to entry if completed successfully, it would drastically reduce our orbit’s altitude by slowing our orbital velocity. With the shuttle moving more slowly, the effect of gravity becomes more pronounced, pulling us toward Earth, which is the desired effect. The timeline would then begin to move at a breakneck speed, giving us less than sixty minutes before touching down.
Our work on the middeck accelerated to what seemed like an almost frenetic pace. The flight deck crew had to be suited up and strapped into their seats before Pambo and Zambo would initiate the OMS burn.
The mission’s end would begin in earnest when Pambo’s gloved index finger hit the execute button of her center-console computer keyboard. The shuttle’s ancient software would then initiate the preset countdown to ignition of the two OMS engines.
One floor below the flight deck, we worked with the primary goal to get everyone into their launch-and-entry suits and strapped down in their chairs.
The suiting up of seven adult crewmembers is a task requiring forethought, planning, and teamwork. The order of suit-up was flight deck first: commander, then pilot, then mission specialist 1, and finally, mission specialist 2. Until they were strapped in, we couldn’t even begin to think about the three of us on the middeck.
Middeck had an order too: returning ISS crewmember first, then Wheels (also a rookie flier), and finally the crew’s veteran, Scott Parazynski. In the event of a last-minute problem, a veteran, experienced and familiar with the suits and hardware, is able to get suited up and strapped into position quickly and without as much help as a rookie.
Once Flambo and Longbow had strapped me in prior to deorbit, there was nothing for me to do but relax and take in the experience and the final activities performed by my crewmates. At touchdown, I was lying on my back, perfectly comfortable in my recumbent space shuttle seat. Being six feet tall, my booted feet extended into two open and empty lockers.
We hit the runway hard, the impact providing a jolt that clearly welcomed me back to my home planet. Much to my surprise, I was feeling like a million bucks.
Safely back on the ground, I was in hog heaven, contemplating seeing my wife and kids after five long months. KSC’s astronaut support personnel opened the shuttle’s side hatch, and veteran astronaut Jerry Ross poked his head in.
“Welcome home!” he said with a huge smile.
An orange corrugated hose, or “elephant trunk,” was inserted through the hatch to pump cool air into the rapidly warming middeck. I could smell the scents of Earth, and it didn’t even matter which smells they were. It was awesome to be home. At least it seemed that way from my comfortable vantage point of lying on my back.
Jerry coordinated the extraction of each crewmember in a clear and specific order. The “ISS guy” would be last.
Scott and Wheels exited their middeck seats quickly and apparently readapted to Earth’s gravity within minutes. They hurriedly departed Discovery in anticipation of doffing the bulky, heavy, extremely warm suits they had been perspiring in for the last hour.
Turning my head ever so gently to the left (now that I was back in the firm grip of Newton’s second law, moving too fast would cause “stomach awareness”), I watched as my crewmates were brought down the ladder from the flight deck, starting with my good friend from Italy, Paolo Nespoli.
As Paolo slowly descended the short metal ladder under the watchful eye of Ross, I shouted, “Way to go, Paolo! Great job!”
He slowly turned his head toward me, and with great effort, uttered a quiet and unconvincing “Thanks.” That was followed by the audible splat of a discharge of fluid from his stomach onto the middeck floor.
Daunted by this resonant and disconcertingly visual display of fluid unloading, I returned my head to neutral and concentrated on the switches and dials mounted on the ceiling in an attempt to get that puking out of my mind and to once again bask in the sense of complete success that had previously washed over me.
Finally it was my turn. Jerry Ross placed a calming hand on my left knee.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“You bet!” I said, having no idea whether I was or not.
He undid my remaining parachute-to-harness straps. (I had already released my five-point seatbelt harness, as it’s a simple device requiring only the turn of a knob.)
Watching for the telltale signs of uneasiness that only a veteran space flier could see, Jerry asked me to slowly sit up.
It took me a great effort to rise to the seated position, even with an assist from Jerry’s strong arms. Upright for the first time on Earth in over five months, the entire middeck of the orbiter began to spin counterclockwise at an incredible rate. Fighting off nausea, I focused on one of the cream-colored lockers we’d opened and closed a hundred times as we packed up. The locker seemed to stare right back at me. Keeping my gaze affixed on my newly found reference point, I resisted the urge to turn my head as the shuttle support team shouted instructions to each other as they began to unload our personal gear.
It took only a few seconds for the spinning of the middeck to slow down and ultimately come to rest, presenting me with the view that any earthbound astronaut would have expected.
Jerry Ross asked again, “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I responded without much enthusiasm.
“I need you to turn to your left and get down on the floor. You will have to crawl to the hatch,” he said.
I turned left ever so slowly, anticipating the moves needed to get myself to my hands and knees on the shuttle’s middeck floor. I took a deep breath. Positioning my hands forward to catch myself should I lose control and fall in a pumpkin-orange heap, I made the move. The thickness of my launch-and-entry suit protected my kneecaps from the hard floor after 152 days of treading only on air. Success was achieved until I moved my head to look at the open hatch and freedom.
The spinning started. Once again, I held firm. My head remained as stable as the faces on Mount Rushmore. It took less time for the spinning to stop than before. Confidence washed over my tired and overheated body. With newfound vigor and the hope that I was going to be able to exit without puking my brains out, I allowed myself the fantasy that I might even be able to perform the shuttle walkaround with the rest of the crew.
It took a considerable amount of strength in my arms and upper body to pull my two-hundred-pound self into the opened hatchway. Nearly exhausted from the effort that took only seconds, I was greeted by two able-bodied flight surgeons. I gave them a weak but sincere smile as they hoisted my arms around their shoulders and lifted me from what was essentially a prone position. It was time to try and walk again. For the first time in over five months, my legs began to receive commands from my brain, the orders flying at the speed of light through a nerve system that seemed to be relearning everything from scratch now that gravity had returned. As if I were Tim Conway playing Mr. Tudball on The Carol Burnett Show, my size-thirteen black flight boots shuffled slowly across the gantry way to the door of the crew transfer vehicle (CTV).
My intestines were having even more difficulty making the transition to normalcy. I had gone from mostly Russian food on the space station to a diet of American food aboard the shuttle. Thus, my internal organs had been in a constant state of gaseous protest for the last two days of the mission.
While I was flatulating like a machine gun, I had not been able to have a successful bowel movement for two days. Coupled with the fact that landing day required me to don both a high-altitude g-suit and the Russian version of athletic compression shorts, my bowels were having a hard time fighting against the pressure.
Finally in the vertical position, the call of nature was coming in loud and clear to me and to anyone close enough to listen or inhale. The fluid-loading protocol we had successfully completed a few hours before was beginning to see results. Sixty-four ounces of liquid and a number of salt tablets contained in my stomach and intestinal tract had a tremendous desire to be uncontained.
So there I stood, fully clothed in my orange suit with polished black flight boots and all the requisite clothing and sublayers, and I had to take a crap!
“Could I please use the bathroom?” I asked politely.
There was only one toilet in the RV-sized CTV, and it represented everything pure and good from some porta-potty company.
“It’s busy—the ladies are cleaning up,” said NASA flight nurse Cathy DiBiase.
Desperate measures were needed. I had to focus on something to take my mind off my bowels. Unfortunately, after a long-duration space flight, my ability to successfully “head ’em off at the pass” using only the muscles in my buttocks was severely diminished. I was squeezing my butt cheeks together as if there were no tomorrow.
Finally my flight nurse suggested I could get out of my flight suit. Agreement came quickly. It was beginning to dawn on me just how hot I was with all those layers on. Being ever so careful to keep my head in a steady, upright, and stable position, I gingerly sat down in an imitation leather recliner. My flight nurse gently untied and removed the increasingly heavy black boots. Even the simple act of glancing down to watch her work brought me to the threshold of a regurgitory explosion.
Next was the orange suit. Critical to the successful doffing effort would be my ability to hold my head still while they pulled the rubber-lined helmet ring over my large and unstable cranium. A time ripe for puking, it would require precise teamwork for my helpers to ease the metal ring over my head. I was required to drop my head forward, then not jerk it right back up once the ring had passed over. Many a strong and steely-eyed astronaut has blown chunks during this key maneuver.
The overwhelming desire to hurl all over the floor was being trumped by my need for time in the toilet. With the orange suit now successfully removed I once again lobbied for some time in the crapper. My request was met again by what was now becoming an unacceptable response: “One of your crewmates is still in there.”
The inability of this group to get me into the toilet was beginning to sound like a reason to drop trou and let it go right there in the middle of the floor. Continually returning to a “buns of steel” mentality, I squeezed my ass cheeks together with all my might. Failure was not an option!
A second and more nauseating wave suddenly overcame my sensory organs. My body temperature was continuing to rise. Extremely warm and uncomfortably clothed in my high-tech undergarments, I readily agreed to the suggestion that I get into more comfortable garb. My blue cooling garment top was promptly removed (I had chosen not to wear the bottoms because in training I had determined that my legs would not require much cooling), followed by my long-sleeved underwear shirt.
Facing the reality that removing my final piece of clothing—my long underwear bottoms—would have me standing there in front of God and everybody wearing only a diaper, I was extremely embarrassed. I asked if there were other clothes for me to wear.
Nurse Cathy, as if impersonating a magician with a top hat, pulled a pair of synthetic, lined, navy blue running shorts out of nowhere. They looked amazingly like those worn by Frank Shorter in the 1976 Olympics, and had the potential to fit over just one of my legs . . . maybe. Nurse Cathy sympathetically declared that the only other choice was my red Hanes boxer shorts, reminiscent of an astronaut Christmas party video skit starring ISS Expedition 9 astronaut Mike “Spanky” Fincke performing zero-g gyrations in a parody of an underwear commercial from the nineties.
My choices limited, and the privacy of the bathroom not available, I reached for the red cotton undies, then threw off my diaper, revealing myself to anyone within eyeshot. Hell, I simply didn’t care anymore! Naked as a jaybird, I fastidiously pulled on the shorts, one leg at a time, carefully avoiding any rapid movements that would put my “no puking” record in jeopardy. After I successfully donned the underwear, the words I had been looking forward to hearing were uttered from somewhere within the CTV: “The bathroom is open now.”
Elated, I grabbed the long silver bar mounted overhead to stabilize my weakened body. Resuming my deliberate Tim Conway shuffle, I was handed a white puke bag by Nurse Cathy: “You know, just in case.”
The toilet door was wide open; I was going to make it. My vision was captured instantly upon entering the tiny room. Poised proudly on a shelf above the small sink were seven bottles, six of which contained recent urine samples from my obviously dehydrated crewmates. Not the best thing for my neural synapses to begin their earthbound processing. I grabbed my bottle and maneuvered close to the toilet to minimize any potential messes. Red boxers down around my knees, I began urinating into my personal sample bottle. The smell was overwhelming! Sensing this could be the trigger I was trying to avoid, I positioned my left forearm against the wall in front of my face. Leaning forward, while simultaneously voiding into an unseen bottle below, I buried my nose deeply into the crevice formed by my bicep and forearm hoping to offset the putrid smell from the dark yellow discharge with the more tolerable scent of my own sweaty skin. The smell of epidermis and sweat seemed to do the trick.
Having tightly screwed the lid back on its container, I placed it on the shelf. Crisis averted, my thoughts turned to a much needed bowel movement. I turned around slowly and lowered my backside until icy cold porcelain on naked skin informed me that I was now seated on the mobile “throne.”
A torrential release ensued that was more welcomed than a raise in my paycheck. Confidence now bordering on arrogance, I thought nothing would get in the way of my successful no-puking return to Earth.
A few minutes into my bodily function, my skin became increasingly warm. The aroma of “number two” was entering my consciousness. I cupped both of my hands tightly over my face, hoping to replace the acrid smell with one slightly more favorable to my senses.
Breathing deeply, the sense of dread subsided and I was able to reason more clearly. Thinking that a flush of the toilet might be helpful, I twisted my body, reaching for the flush handle. As I was groping at the side of the toilet tank it become apparent that the flush handle was located down near the floor, for operation using one’s feet. Knowing that moving my head toward the floor would have disastrous consequences, I turned to what I hoped would be a successful plan B. It was not meant to be. One more whiff of an already completed critical body function told my brain that finally I had had enough. An oral discharge was imminent. I grabbed for the pristine white barf bag.
I unloaded into that bag with a fervor not seen since my final sixteen-hundred-meter relay effort on the Hastings College track team. Volume quickly became a concern, as thrusts from my stomach muscles continued to push pale purple liquid from the depths of my gut. With a couple of final thrusts, complete with audible cues sounding like what one might hear after a successful frat party, my “Technicolor yawn” drew to a welcome close.
Then, with me sitting on the stool in a considerably compromising position, the door flew open. “Are you okay?” Nurse Cathy asked predictably.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I yelled. “I’m just throwing up! Please close the door.”
As the door swung closed, I figured it was time to finalize my efforts. Having made sure my body was completely empty, I cleaned each and every orifice from which nastiness had emanated. Still not feeling too great, but much better than when I originally entered this tiny stink hole, I mustered up enough strength to stand and get out of the bathroom, back into a more welcoming (and fresher smelling) environment.
Opening the door, I was greeted by a hospital gurney with a waiting IV bag, ready to replace the fluids I had so unceremoniously discharged only moments ago.
I welcomed the opportunity to lie down and relax. Sheer exhaustion was beginning to set in. I desperately needed some rest. The ride back to astronaut crew quarters was only twenty or thirty minutes in actual time, but it seemed like a blissful eternity to me, asleep on my newfound bed. As we approached the Office of Space Communication (OSC) Building at KSC, where I would be transferred from the recreational vehicle into the biomedical wing, I was awakened by the din of welcoming voices.
Emotion and excitement pulled me from my exhausted stupor. I was finally going to see my family! After 152 days in outer space—not to mention the week prior to launch spent in quarantine—I ached for the touch of my wife and kids. With the help of my good friend Mary Jane Anderson, a biomedical science investigator from JSC with Nebraska ties, the upper half of my bed was raised slightly.
At the back of the murmuring chorus, standing strong and tall but looking a bit tentative was my son, Cole.
As our eyes locked—in what for him must have been surprise at his dad’s pale-as-a-ghost gaze—I began to weep. The emotional release was almost as if something tragic had happened. He looked terrific, appearing to have grown at least six inches since I left the planet! He began to smile and I was at peace; I was home.
With tear-blurred vision, I saw my wife, Susan, and daughter, Sutton, emerge from the crowd. As they cautiously approached the gurney, my tears gushed, this time accompanied by gulping sobs the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since the day after Columbia exploded, when I broke down and cried during church.
I reached for Susan’s hand and pulled her tightly against my chest. We squeezed each other tightly for the first time in over 152 days. Between sobs of joy, hugs, and kisses, I whispered into her ear the words I had been rehearsing for months: “We did it, honey, we did it! We did it together! I love you so much!”
Our personal time was short-lived. It was time for all my postflight tests. Sutton, now almost seven years old, watched with utter amazement as Mary Jane slid a newly opened catheter into a vein in my right arm. With rapt attention, Sutton watched her daddy’s blood being sucked into multiple clear-glass test tubes.
“Daddy’s face is really white,” she said.
Drawing blood was not reinforcing my body’s recovery from the weightlessness of space.
In only a few minutes, the powers-that-be instructed me it was time to move to where postflight experimentation on me could begin in earnest. As they wheeled me to the next location, Susan and Sutton on either side of the gurney and Cole following closely behind, I recognized Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Dressed in his blue flight suit, he was moving along with our assembly. Destined to one day become the first Canadian to command the space station, I assumed he was there in some official capacity, although I didn’t have a clue as to what that might be. The person I would have expected was my crew support astronaut, Chris Cassidy. (Chris would also fly on the station during the period Hadfield served as the commander.) Cassidy had been on the landing strip helping us get out of the Discovery in his capacity as a “Cape Crusader” (the nickname for astronauts who are assigned to support a mission’s launch and landing operations), so it was possible Hadfield was acting as his backup.
Suddenly Hadfield grabbed Sutton by the arm and tried to pull her away from the gurney. Anger welled up inside me. In a firm voice he told her she couldn’t be with her father because Daddy had to go do tests. Had I been possessed of any strength whatsoever, I think I would have punched him in the nose! I know he was trying to do his job, but this was important family time. Pushing my reconnection with them until later in the name of data gathering seemed inappropriate.
As I was whisked away from my family, Susan was consoling Sutton with the reminder that we would be seeing Daddy very soon. My sense of loss and anger was offset when the small crowd burst into a rousing chorus of applause and shouts of “Way to go, Clay! Welcome home, Clay!”
During the transit to where data collection would begin, I quietly suggested to Nurse Cathy that I needed to use the bathroom again. Helping me down from the gurney, she cradled my right elbow, giving me support as she directed me toward my destination. Her query as to whether I desired her assistance was met with my sincere “No, thank you.” I felt up to tackling this challenge alone.
Nurse Cathy maneuvered me to the threshold of the restroom. It appeared enormous in size. In the room’s center sat a solitary white pedestal sink. To its right was a standard flush toilet.
Reassuring Nurse Cathy that I was capable of doing this on my own, I began the daunting trek across the open tile to the desperately needed destination. Wiser since the CTV experience, upon reaching the toilet I removed all my clothing (t-shirt and briefs) for the upcoming discharge. It was not until I was far into my second bowel movement of the day that I realized a critical error had occurred. I had no puke bag.
Fearful that yelling for help would further compromise an already tenuous situation, I scanned the area for anything that could serve as backup.
There was nothing but the sink, and time was running out. It was time for MacGyver-like improvisation. Maintaining a steady head and posture, and stretching with all my might, I could not reach the sink.
Undaunted, I made my next move. Sliding my ass carefully around the back circumference of the seat, closest to the tank, I was able to maneuver my backside to the point where my left cheek was firmly positioned on the side of the seat closest the sink, while my right cheek was hanging in mid-air, performing its own version of Wicked’s Defying Gravity.
With a desperate lunge, I reached for the edge of the sink. But my fingers, weak from my five months in orbit, began slipping free from the rim. My body began to follow. I was sliding from the toilet, slipping under the sink. Then I spied the only option I had left. Reaching below the sink and stretching for all I was worth, I grabbed for the bright silver P-trap assembly. With a solid grip on the pipe, I pulled my chin up to rest on the edge of the sink, still managing to keep one ass cheek on the toilet seat.
There was no time for further adjustments. A flood of fluids returned, accompanied by the verbal grunt of another Technicolor yawn.
“Are you okay?” came Nurse Cathy’s dependable cry as she sprinted into the center of the bathroom.
“I’m fine; I’m just puking,” I barked.
Nurse Cathy was staring at a totally naked, totally embarrassed astronaut, stretched almost horizontally between a sink and a toilet, puking his brains out.
Fatigue was wearing heavily on me by the time a group of Canadian scientists began prepping me for data collection for the Canadian Cardiovascular Investigation on ISS. They were studying the body’s cardiovascular system and its ability to deliver blood to the organs in a weightless environment. By observing the human body’s fluid system in zero gravity, they hoped to better understand how it works on Earth. A better understanding could lead to medical breakthroughs for folks with heart and circulatory problems.
As a willing preflight volunteer, I was pretty much stuck doing whatever they wanted or needed, and they needed data collected immediately after landing. I was so exhausted it was difficult to keep my eyes open, but every time I began to fade away, one of the investigators would push or prod me to move this way or that way. It took several hours before they were finally finished. Another session would be required first thing the next morning.
I didn’t care. I was about to spend the night with my wife for the first time in over 152 days. I knew what I wanted to do that night with Susan, but I was not at all optimistic that my body would comply. It simply didn’t seem possible that I would be able to stay awake. Unless I could get a catnap, my intimate night with Susan was going to consist of me lying down on the bed and greeting her the next morning.
Finally, at the room in crew quarters I was to share with Susan, I received a phone call. Sutton was in the condo on the beach imitating her father . . . she was throwing up, too. Susan felt it necessary that she stay there with Sutton rather than coming all the way back out to crew quarters at KSC.
While disappointed, I realized this would be best for all of us. I was fighting to stay awake and remain ambulatory. I hadn’t eaten anything in hours for fear of puking it right back up. My rehabilitation specialist, Mark Guilliams, was hoping we would be able to get in a short rehabilitation workout before I fell asleep for the night.
Mark’s plans had about the same odds of happening as my romantic evening with my wife.
I begged and pleaded with Mark and Nurse Cathy to just let me go to sleep. Mark negotiated; he would leave me be for the night if I agreed to a session on the stationary bike after my data gathering procedure the next morning. Willing to do almost anything in order to get to go to sleep, I quickly agreed.
As our negotiations ended, Nurse Cathy wheeled an IV tower into the room with antinausea medicine in the clear plastic bag.
I suggested, and they agreed, that it might be best if I ate something before going to sleep. My original plan for my first meal back on Earth was a medium-rare T-bone steak (Nebraska corn-fed beef) with a loaded baked potato and a good, hardy Cabernet Sauvignon (Silver Oak Cellars, perhaps).
I settled for two pieces of wheat toast with grape jelly that Mark graciously brought to me on a Styrofoam plate with a napkin, and I loved every bite.
With a hint of nausea and without my wife, the day of my triumphant return to planet Earth came to a close at 8:37 p.m. in that tiny room. It was my fifteenth wedding anniversary. Glowing faintly, a silent calculator marking my new earthbound pedometer, the numbers on the radio alarm silently clicked over from 8:36 to 8:37. My mind went blank . . . no dizziness, no thoughts of accomplishment, no regrets . . . just the restful peace of my first night’s sleep back under the influence of gravity.
I slept for nearly nine hours. My body position had not shifted one iota from where it was when I crashed the night before. As I tried to roll over and get out of the bed to empty my screaming kidneys, I felt every ounce of my two-hundred-plus pounds. Every single movement required energy that just didn’t seem to be there anymore.
I had to carefully position myself for each distinct movement, as if my body was a marionette and my brain a puppet master. Minutes passed before I reached the foot of the bed, my feet planted squarely on the floor. Head resting in my hands, I contemplated the scope and magnitude of the prospective journey to the toilet. My body insisted I had precious little time left. It had to be done.
Focusing all my energy on my upper body, I made a lunge reminiscent of my long-jumping days in college and gained the two feet between myself and the entertainment center near the foot of the bed. Grabbing the edge, I pulled myself into an upright position.
Leaning on furniture and walls I made slow, heavy progress to the door of the crapper, where I worked myself into a stable position within the doorjamb.
Feeling like a contestant on America’s Biggest Loser or Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition, I rotated 180 degrees, then forced my gym shorts down as far as I could push without bending over. Privates liberated, goal in reach, I released my death grip on the door jamb and pushed every so gently. Gravity slammed my ass down on the toilet seat with the subtlety of an anchor hitting water, but the resultant trajectory was within the statistically dispersed value of plus-or-minus one sigma.
When I had successfully completed phase 1 of my morning ablutions, I began gathering the energy required to move on to phase 2—an activity I had been looking forward to for a very long time—a nice hot shower.
The wonders of Earth are magnified for an astronaut returning from a long-duration spaceflight. Consider, for example, the joy I felt when I finally maneuvered my body—which felt gargantuan—to the door of the shower stall. There I found a prepositioned chair (thanks to Nurse Cathy) equidistant from everything I would need. It was rapture, but nothing like the rapture of hot water pulsing over my entire body, a temperature-controlled rainstorm of ecstasy. For thirty-seven minutes I languished in this haven of joy. It is beyond my powers of description to tell you how good that shower felt, but the word orgasmic comes to mind.
Next came a trip to the sink for my first Newtonian-controlled shave since launch. I couldn’t lift the hand holding the razor without the assistance of the other arm. As I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror, my earthbound view of the frailty of the human condition was really driven home. My alter ego was skinny, badly shaven, extremely pale, and in desperate need of some food and sunshine.
And he was an astronaut—a flown astronaut!
“Puking: The Sequel” was humorous only after its completion.
Less than three years later, descending the ramp steps to the foot of Discovery, I would remember the debacle in full detail.
Again in the OSC and again under the watchful eye of Nurse Cathy, I asked if she would please take me to the room where she had witnessed my horizontal puking nakedness in 2007. Nurse Cathy walked me to the place we had shared our intimate moment nearly three short years before.
The room that had appeared so enormous was quite small. I was stunned. Surely this was not the same place. The cavernous room I remembered, with a toilet and sink so carefully placed directly in its center—where had it gone? Nurse Cathy and I smiled and hugged. Apparently, long-duration spaceflight can play tricks with your mind.