You're listening to KFI AM six forty the bill handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio f.
Houston.
I am ready for the event.
Excellent KFI radio. This is Mission Control, Houston. Please call station for a voice check station.
This is Amy King with kfi's wake up call. How do you hear me?
Amy?
This is Nick and I can hear you loud and clear.
All right, KFI, welcome aboard and what you have just heard, and we're going to go diving into that a little deeper right now this morning at five point thirty, Amy King speaking to Nick, a Colonel Nick aboard the International Space Station.
Now, before you get into it, Amy, I want to point out what a big deal this is.
You have seen people interviewed in space, right, but you've always seen the interviews on national news outlets. It does not happen on local news outlets. It just doesn't happen.
And Amy was able to pull it off.
And so we're going to do She's going to play We're going to play a couple of snippets from the interview she did this morning, and then two questions which Amy of course did not ask, which inevitably I would have asked and that would have been the last time, of course, I would ever be allowed to talk to an astronaut.
And so Amy, I'm going to just throw it to you with your interview.
Okay, Well, we're just going to play some excerpts of it and also let you know that you can listen to the whole interview on the KFI website at kfiam six forty dot com slash space. You can listen to today's interview that was live on the International Space Station, plus the others that we've done over the last six months with Colonel Hag who's been so generous in sharing his time as he prepared to go to the International Space station'll be putting out the Zoom call on our
social media soon. They're putting some finishing touches on that. But it was fun for me because I got to actually see Colonel Haig up in space, and we want you to share that with you as well. He launched to the International Space Station on September twenty eighth, and so he's been there for less than a month, and his launch was actually delayed because of what happened with Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore. They were the astronauts who went up on the Boeing star Liner and then they
couldn't come back on the star Liner. So they are basically going to spend eight or nine months on the space station. And they had to reconfigure Colonel Haig's mission to accommodate and be able to bring them home in February. So with Colonel Hagg and Alex who's the cosmonaut who's with him, and Sonny and Butch and others, it's getting a little crowded up on the space station. So I asked Colonel Haig how many people are there on board currently?
Right now, we have eleven people on the space station, and today is kind of an exciting day. Crew eight is preparing to undock, so four of our crewmates are getting ready to hop into their capsule and return to Earth and splash down on Friday, and so there's a buzz of anticipation and excitement. I'm happy for them to be able to get back to their to their families. It's also it's also an exciting time because it's turning
over another chapter, another crew handover. You know, they're passing the baton to us, if you will, and that baton passing has been happening continuously for two and a half decades, and their floats Matt screaming by getting ready to go up into his dragon and continue packing and getting ready to leave.
So that was and you'll be able to see it on the zoom call because during this whole conversation with Colonel Hag there were astronauts buzzing by, and as he said that, that was part of the Crew eight, which
is planning to come home. In fact, our interview that we've been talking about and promoting for the last week was in jeopardy yesterday because because they were weather dependent on when the Crew eight was going to be able to return, so they didn't know if they were going to have to adjust sleep schedules which would adjust when they would be available to talk and everything. But it all worked out, so we're thrilled about that.
Yeah, the signal was amazing. Oh my god, that's for starters. Also, eleven people. Is that a lot of people? Is that a crowded iss.
So when I've talked to Colonel Hag before, they usually I think it's like five six seven that are normally up there, So there are more people up there, but they can accommodate for it, and they said. He said that the size of the space station itself, if you go end to end, is the size of a football field. But if you look just at the pressurized places, the living spaces, it's the volume of a about a four or five store room house.
Oh, so it's big.
It's relatively large.
And then he said that you use everything like you don't think of a four bedroom house like we think of it in a linear way, because they're using all the space all the way up to the ceilings. They can use every surface because there's no gravity and they have access to all of it.
All Right, we have two minutes before the break. What can you do with that in terms of your interview?
Okay?
I asked him about how things run on the International Space Station, knowing that they have to get resupplies. They have missions going up to resupply them all the time, and I wanted to know how do you get your air and water? Is it shipped up there or do they just have it up there now and recycle it.
It's a fairly closed loop system, meaning we have to recycle everything. And currently if we focus on water, the station is operating about ninety eight percent of the ability to recycle the water that we use. And so even right now, there's air conditioners that are scrubbing this air, and as we perspire moisture, they're condensing that, putting it back into a system that purifies it so we can
drink it. And so we're able to recover ninety eight percent of the water that we consume, which is important because water is really dense, it's really heavy, and things that are heavy or expensive to launch. It'll be even more important when we start having a sustained presence on the Moon to be able to recycle without having to resupply and use our resources that are in place already.
So you kind of have an endless supply Now that it's there.
It's pretty endless, but we still rely on cargo vehicles every month or two to bring up some supplies to resupply us. One of the things that we are working on but we haven't figured out yet, is how do we grow all the food that we need so that we don't have to resupply with food. Currently, we resupply all of our food from the ground, and so we rely on those transport vehicles to bring us up food every couple months to make sure we've got enough to eat.
And he said that, as you mentioned, they're working on that because and that's some of the experiments that they're doing, because they're always doing tons of experiments, and that's one of them, is trying to learn figure out how they can grow stuff in space.
Do they filter their p or is that gone? And that's a legitimate question. I have a few that aren't.
I don't know. I didn't ask him that because see.
Amy, you have to ask me questions that you're going to ask the colonel next time.
Well again, as you mentioned, you probably wouldn't be able to interview him again, and I'm hoping that i'd get to chain.
Okay, we're going to come back and we're going to do more.
We'll finish it up and then at the bottom of the hour, Jim Keeney is going to join us with Medical News.
And back we go. Amy.
This morning at five point thirty an interview with a Colonel Nick Haig, and it was in a normally an interview because she was here at KFI. He was on the International Space Station circling the Earth and for a locals to have an interview in a conversation with an astronaut up there is no small thing. And Amy and Colonel Haig have actually sort of become friendly, which is kind of neat. You've developed somewhat of a relationship with him.
Well, we got the opportunity months ago to talk to him because he's a Space Force guardian and he's the first guardian to go up to the International Space Station.
You used to be Air Force.
He switched over to Space Force and now there's like five thousand Space Force or maybe it's ten thousand, but he's the first to go to the International Space Station, and they wanted to kind of get out the word about what Space Force does, and so that's how we
kind of hooked up initially. And then after talking to him and he's so great to talk to and has just has so much information, we're like, can we do this again, Like, as you're training to do your mission, we want to hear about what it's like to train to go up to the International Space Station. So that's how that all started, and now like six months later, he's up there on the International Space Station.
So let's pay a little bits and pieces of this interview this morning, which, by the way, I will explain how you can hear the whole thing or see the whole thing even all.
Right, Amy, Okay, So you know they have to eat up there, and you think of space food, and I always think of like tang and MRIs, which are the meals ready to eat in the military. And I thought, oh God, that's got to be gross. So I asked Colonel Haig, how's the food.
Yeah, the food is great up here. There's plenty of it, and there's a variety of flavors. You know, this morning I was able to have some coffee with cream and sugar. I had some citrus fruit salad, some strawberries, oatmeal with blueberries in it, and a vegetable kish That's what I had this morning. It's delicious, no complaints.
Sounds better than what I had for breakfast. Also, in some of our other interviews, we've talked about space walks.
I mean, like, how amazing would that be?
And he's talked about it because this is actually a second time up to the International Space Station and so he's described those experiences to us before, and he's going to be up there for six months. He hasn't gotten to do a spacewalk on this mission. Yet, so I asked him, does everybody get to do a spacewalk or do you.
Have to kind of rock paper scissors to see who gets to go.
Yeah, it's more like rock paper scissors. Unfortunately, there's not enough spacewalk.
I wish.
I wish everybody could go out and experience a spacewalk. Sometimes there's an expedition where there's no work that needs to be done on the outside. Spacewalks are a dangerous activity, a risky activity that we take, and so we only go out when we have to. And so the things that compel us to go out there are to fix things that are broken, to kind of maintain our laboratory. The other things we go out to do are put science in place, or to repair science experiments or increase
the capabilities of the station. So we don't go out all the time, but when we do, we sure try to enjoy it.
And he gets to experience a lot as he's whizzing around the Earth at more than seventeen thousand miles an hour. So I asked Colonel Haig what his favorite thing was about being in space.
There's a lot of things that you that you really enjoy, so it's tough for me to say this is my favorite thing. Going over and watching the earth glide by is unbelievable. In ten minutes, we can go all the way from Washington State, all the way down to the tip of the you know, the Florida Peninsula and Key
West and see the entire US glide by. And you can look down with your naked eye and you can see the city, city, roads and buildings, and it feels so close, even though you know you're two hundred and fifty miles away. That's it's just it's awe inspiring to have that perspective. But you know, when you come back inside, it's it's fun to be able to do tricks and flips and be upside down and which he's doing right now,
continue to talk, and so that never gets old. We have our own little competition of you know, who can do as many flips without wrecking into something or transit the lab in the most dynamic way. But I think the singular most favorite thing I like doing up here is doing things with other humans. You know, that shared experience of whether we're competing and doing zero G gymnastics or whether we're both looking out the window that shared experience makes it even more special.
You know, Amy, I assume, and we're going to end it with that.
You're going to have another interview with him, because he's being very gracious and you have the relationship, and so I'm going to ask you if you would note this down two or three things that you have to ask.
Of course, bathroom issues okay.
Not asking him about bathroom issues.
Okay, bathroom issues number one and number two.
Sex issues either with someone else or with himself, and any one of those three it has to be a mess. And you he's got to tell us what happens and how they deal with it.
What do you think?
Again, I am hoping to talk to Colonel Hag again, so I'm not gonna ask question.
Yeah, Amy, come on, you could have done so much, all right?
If people want to see this, okay, how do they replay this?
How do they enjoy what you have done?
Well, you're going to be able to see it right now.
You can hear it the whole interview on the wake Up Call page at KFIAM six forty dot com, slash space, and again we're going to get the get it up on YouTube and then you'll be able to see the video, and it's really fun seeing Nick as he is, you know, doing those flips that he was just talking about on the space station and the other astronauts go whizzing by him as we're having our conversation, and it's really cool.
We had seventeen minutes to talk with Colonel Hagg today and before we let him go, I asked him to share his final thoughts.
Yeah.
Amy, I just want to say thank you for you know, talking with me over the past six to I think almost eight months now and helping me share this experience. The space flight and the human exploration of space is so important. It's so life changing, and I anybody that has the dream of getting involved with it, I urged them to just chase that passion. There is room for everyone as we explore deeper into space.
That's cool, And it sounded like he was in studio, didn't it. It was amazing most to two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth and flying around yep.
And we were connected through Johnson's Space Center in Houston.
Up to that to this PlayStation.
It's time for some medical news with doctor Jim Kiney, chief medical Officer for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Lafe, Long Beach and board certified er doctor extraordinary.
Jim, good morning, Good morning, Bill go all.
We have talked for a while. I've been gone and so it's kind of nice to have you back. And the great news that came out is you can go to McDonald's and have an eMac. Used to be a big mac, now it's an eMac.
Because of E. Coli.
And this is, I guess not fun. Let's talk about it because you know, here's the news. One person dead not good news. And I think about nineteen people injured. Why is that now exploding in the news with the number of people that are affected so small.
Well, I mean it is surprising that the number is so small because the stuff is mass produced, and you know, it can really affect the large quantities of beef for other food sources. So when they do discover it, they want to let people know. From what I haven't heard so far is that E. Coal I one five seven. You know, that's the strain that causes kidney failure and
more severe damage and can be extremely life threatening. So you know, they just want to let people know and recall any of the meat that may have been affected.
But you're right.
I mean, we have one of the safest food handling systems in the world.
So I mean that's just part of the process.
Now someone has ecoal i and again we've talked about this over and over again, the same symptoms you fever, achy in this case, a lot of diarrhea, gastro intestinal issues, and you've got dozens of different diagnoses. How quickly can you cure them, deal with it or is there a point where they have really hit critical mass?
Yeah, so it's the key, and I don't want to get too gross, but the key here is typically fever. You know, because a lot of people have vomiting and they'll have some diarrhea and those are often viruses. They could be related to something that was in the food, or allergies, other things, inflammatory colitis, all these types of things. But when you have a fever, and especially if you have blood in the diarrhea, that's when that's what we
call dysentery, when you have blood. And so that's when usually we want to get treatment going and we'll send these offer a stool culture to see what grows, because the problem is if you treat that E. Coli one five seven that I just mentioned. With antibiotics, you're actually more likely to induce kidney failure. So that one we will be more supportive with and try and avoid contact with other people so you don't spread it. That when we start people on antibiotics, it shortens the course of
the disease and it reduces the spread. More importantly, it's not that it's an absolute necessity to start people on antiotics when they get an E.
Coli infection.
What you're saying, if I got it right, that getting them in on biotics can actually cause the kidney to fail.
And therefore, what do you do? Is it a choice of one or the other.
Yeah, So that's why we want to get the stool culture first, because we want to know what we're treating exactly, and if it depends if the person has other underlying conditions, you may decide to take the risk of trying to improve their condition with antibiotics. Otherwise you may withhold it to see how they do on their own clearing the infection.
Yeah.
How contagious is this because if you're only talking to relatively few people, is it you have to be in contact with that food source.
Yeah, you either have to be in contact with the food source or with somebody who's been stricten ill with the E.
Coli.
Because it is true that a lot of people don't do a great job of handwashing, and again it's pretty gross, but it's called fecal oral contamination. So someone uses the restroom, doesn't wash their hands, and then they're either involved in food prep or or touch something that you touch, and then it can get into your system.
So would you advise people who have gastro intentional problems to just take a look in the toilet to see what's going on. Yeah, especially especially before breakfast, especially if you're eating oatmeal.
Exactly.
You know, Yeah, you need to take a look, see what's going on. And if you see blood or you're having ever, that's the time you need to see a doctor.
Yeah, I mean all kidding aside, my intern is for years and years said Bill, you got to look. I mean that is part of diagnosing, to find out if you've got any issues.
Yeah, but if you're if you're a male over fifty, you're pretty much, you know, judging the entire quality of your day based on what.
It looks like. So you don't have to tell those that group of people to.
Look, Yeah, what is the quality of the day after you've looked at inside the toilet. I don't know that that is a different medical issue. It's probably like logical issue and that's not what you do. And we've got just talking to Jim about the e coali the well. I guess this reread of e coal I for it's been a while since we've had that. And this is doctor Jim Keeney, who is a chief medical officer for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach and an
er doc. All right, Jim, let's talk about this nationwide ivy fluid shortage.
And a lot we're better off now.
But how important is this stuff to the general medical world?
So, I mean for.
Certain people, I mean this is critically important. So it's you know, ivy fluids. Sometimes when you can't either you can't eat because you're gonna have surgery, or because you have other conditions going on, because you need dialysis, because you're in septic shock or other serious critical condition, these fluids can be life saving. On the other hand, I mean, this is probably one of the most over you used resources in medicine. You know, you come to the hospital
what's the first thing they do. They put in an iv It's gone to the point where almost patients are disappointed if they don't have an IVY put in their arm when they get here. I know that's not true for everybody. Some people say why is this thing here? But a lot of people will look at you like, why don't I even you haven't even given me an IVY yet you've done nothing for me, So you know, heavily overused. We know that oral rehydration works better actually
than IV rehydration when it's possible. But for those people that are critically ill, I mean, we need.
To use these fluids.
Now.
I was talking about those the bags of saline right that you hang on those little hooks and then they go ahead and.
Go into your arm exactly.
But it's used to carry meds into your system, so certain medication bags. It's used to perform dialysis, it's used during surgery.
Like I said, so wide use and critical.
But the Baxter's plant in North Carolina, which was hit by Hurricane Heleen, they produce six sixty percent of the IVY fluids for the entire United States. So again we keep getting revealed all of these production bottlenecks where one company gets wiped out and we're in big trouble.
So that's what's happening. They're trying to get back up to speed.
I know that, you know, there's people that understand this is life saving stuff. So people that work at this factory are trying to get their personal lives back together and get back to work at the factory. Meanwhile, the factory has to be inspected cleaned because it was impacted by the hurricane. So they're not expecting to be back to normal production for some time. For they said probably through twenty twenty four. They will not be at normal production.
I understand that they're bringing in the fluid from outside the country.
Yeah, that's one strategy is to try and get more from outside the country. But again, when you've lost almost sixty percent of the fluid production in the United States, that's that's a big ask. So we're you know, of course, we're putting in strategies to reduce the unnecessary use of IVY fluids and to you know, there's all kinds of strategies that we can employ that kind of not necessarily use all the fluid that we used to use and really have no harm to patients. But again, it is
a widely overused therapy. It's just people think it has no big expense and no big downside, so they give people fluids. But there is expense and there is downside. So this might be a good learning lesson where we can kind of tighten up when and how we use IVY fluids.
Yeah, same thing with antibiotics to you know, we've talked about that that you just throw antibiotics at someone because the patient insists on it, and it's kind of crazy. Where the immunity issue that we're losing immunity. I mean, we've talked about that over and over. Takeaway here if you see the nurse filling up an IVY bag from the.
Tap, that's problematic.
Right, Yeah, that would be a problem.
See that's how it goes. All right, Jim, thank you. We will talk again next Wednesday and we'll come up with some other stuff to talk about.
Have a good one. Welcome back, all right, Thank you very much, doctor Jim Keeney. Who's you know?
Jim has been with us for over twenty years, and you know a lot of people who been with us for that long. God, we're all getting old and falling apart, aren't we Amy? By the way, never mind, I'm not going to go there falling apart, but okay, fair enough. I want to remind everybody two things that, first of all, the World Series starts on Friday, five oh eight is the first pitch, and we're the our sister station klac AM five seventy sports is covering it.
Were they or they are the.
Official Dodger broadcasts on radio also the iHeartRadio app, and the keyword is AM five seventy No, it's five seventy AM Sports, so you get to listen to the Dodgers game. Also, we're going to bring you more news about the interview that Amy did with Colonel Nick Haig aboard the Space station Great Stuff, and we'll talk about how you.
Can listen to that on demand.
It was at eight o'clock this morning, and on top of that, we're putting it up on Facebook and.
Other ways because you want to see this.
Also because he's flying around and doing his thing in zero gravity, so a lot going on. Tomorrow we start this all over again, saying goodbye to Elmer, who has been filling in for Kono. And by the way, Elmer, you have done an absolute mediocre job and it's greatly appreciated.
So I'm sure.
I'm sure we'll see you again at some point. We're gonna find out if Neil comes back with us tomorrow. He's a little under the weather, and hey, I'm here and I might as well, because this is what Amy does. She thanks everybody, So here we go. Thank you Amy for being with us, well, thank you Elmer for being with us, and thank you so much for being with us.
And Neil, thank you for not being here.
And we'll see you tomorrow, maybe five am. Wake up call, and then we come aboard right here kf I am six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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