From the first mention of the medical emergency on Crew-11 until well after the splash down, there was a ton of speculation about who the crew member was. From what I've read, both in comments here and on other sites, the most common speculation was that the only woman on the crew, Zena Cardman, was pregnant.
If you'll recall, when the issue first showed up, Zena Cardman and crew mate Mike Fincke were scheduled for a spacewalk on January 8th when the medical emergency was revealed. From my article when the story first went public:
The story broke in the last 24 hours that first, a scheduled spacewalk for this morning (Jan. 8 at 8AM EST) with two astronauts from Crew-11 was being cancelled due to a medical issue with one of the two. Today, NASA decided to do an evacuation of the crew from the ISS while being careful to say it was not a medical emergency.
One of the aspects rarely mentioned was that with Cardman and Fincke cancelling the spacewalk, it seemed pretty obvious that one of those two was the one with the medical emergency.
The rumors turned out to be flipped. Today, NASA revealed the Mike Fincke was the one with the emergency. Mike was the Crew-11 pilot and commander of the ISS' Expedition 74. He requested that NASA identify him, which removes the HIPAA concerns, and posted this to X:
You'll note that at no place does he actually say what the medical condition was or is. I'm not going to imply that he was pregnant, but it was something he doesn't feel comfortable talking about.
The exact nature of his ailment remains undisclosed, but Fincke's statement clarified that the issue, while not considered an emergency, required "advanced medical imaging not available on the space station." As a result, Fincke and his crewmates — NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, Japanese space agency astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov — returned to Earth aboard the Crew Dragon "Endeavour" on Jan. 15, about a month earlier than originally planned.
If I missed work due to something like an inguinal hernia, I probably wouldn't care if it was widely known, but that's as close as I'll get to speculating about what happened. I just wish him the best in healing and getting back to life as normal.
Hmmmm. Very interesting. Hope he recovered well. Needing more imaging than what was on the ISS, which means an MRI or CT with contrast, as the ISS does have a modern digital X-ray system.
ReplyDeleteCould be circulatory issues or something like that.
How do the ER patients always phrase it? "I was floating around in zero G, I tripped and fell and got impaled on this: [advanced medical imaging]"
ReplyDeleteI was wrong; I thought it was a pregnancy. Good practice for everyone. Glad it is at least stabilized.
ReplyDeleteCan you BELIEVE this?
ReplyDeleteOr is it an attempt to get one to "look away" from the real issue?
Not that any astronaut would try to "take one" for a fellow astronaut...
That only happens in the military.