NASA, Apollo 13, and Placentas

I used to want to be an astronaut.  I know, all kids dream of it.  But this was really a serious goal for me (ok, as serious as it could be when I had a bunch of other goals as well).  I did my research and found that 11% of the astronaut corps (at that time) was made up of physicians.  I was in medical school, so that was the route I planned to take to make it as an astronaut.  During my fourth year of medical school, I got to do a rotation in aerospace medicine at the Johnson Space Center.  It was a once in a lifetime experience.  I worked right along side the astronauts and flight surgeons, went through all of the physiological training, did research with the engineers on the latest prototype space station escape module, and a bunch of other exiting stuff, all the while schmoozing with the right people to try to get my foot in the door at NASA.  I joined the Air Force and became a flight surgeon to get valuable experience and move closer to that dream.  I didn't see why it couldn't be me up in space someday, just as well as anyone else.  Then a funny thing happened.  I fell in love.  We started a family.  Why would I ever want to leave them to go in space?  Why would I ever want to subject myself to something so dangerous and risk our kids losing their mother?  That dream was quickly replaced by other dreams, and I never looked back.  That is, until I have had so much time on my hands to become introspective over the past month.  I have come up with two analogies involving space that I can't help but think about.


First of all, I know for a fact I will never experience life in space.  But you know what?  I'm experiencing exactly what astronauts go through when they do not have the resistance of gravity to keep their muscles strong.  After our little fighter is born, I'll have to make my pathetic, atrophied body reacclimate to gravity just as the astronauts do after returning from space.  As a matter of fact, most of the research done (and there's a lot of it out there) on the physiologic effects of space travel has been done on bedrest patients.  As a student, I would read all these studies and think you couldn't pay me enough to be one of these test subjects, laying in bed day after day.  Who does this, and how desperate are they for money?  But they did contribute a great deal to the science of space travel, so maybe that was enough of an honor to sacrifice their time and bodies.  I'm not that devoted to the cause!  But give me the right reason, like what we're going through now, and I'm all for it. 

Here's the second space analogy that hit me yesterday during our ultrasound.  Remember the movie Apollo 13?  After one of the two oxygen tanks in the Service Module exploded, the mission to the moon was aborted, and the crew had to depend upon the Lunar Module (LM) to serve as a lifeboat to get them home.  The LM consumables were intended to sustain two people for a day and a half, and it ended up sustaining three people for four days.  It took a lot of fancy ingenuity from the crew, support personnel, and flight controllers to get them home safely.  I remember a scene when they were leaving the LM, and they had a moment of awe and respect for their lifeboat.  It sure wasn't pretty, but it did its job like a champ and kept them alive.  That's how I feel about my placenta; it was supposed to last 48 hours, but now it has been 5 weeks.  It's as ugly as any ultrasound tech or perinatologist has ever seen, but the day I deliver, I plan to give it a little salute for a job well done, far exceeding it's original expectations and keeping our little guy alive as long as it did.  Then, after gawking for a few seconds, send it to the lab and find out what the heck is wrong with it.  The doctors have already told us they want pathology reports to figure out answers on why it looks as odd as it does because they're scratching their heads along with us.

Little did I know a decade ago, my fantasies about traveling in space would morph into simulating zero gravity from a hospital bed and saluting placentas.  Crazy how life can turn out a lot different than we originally plan.  But I tell ya, once I get to feel this baby in my arms, it'll be way better than anything I dreamed.