NASA Has Stocking Woes

In November, Hair Balls interviewed Ryan “Shaggy” Hull about his future with the NASA Space Program. The local indie rocker volunteered for a bed-rest study that helps keep our astronauts comfortable in outer space. Hull will spend three months in bed with his feet elevated and doctors study the effects on his body.

He begins the long haul in February or March, but recently participated in a seven-day study so he could test the waters and so doctors could test specialty socks made for astronauts. That’s where, um, Houston had a problem.

“They have these compression stockings that they put on our legs and I don’t know if they were too tight – obviously they weren’t too tight because I went to have it fitted and measured to my leg and my foot – so I don’t know maybe it pinched a nerve or something, but the top of my foot had a numb spot on it,” Hull tells Hair Balls.

The doctors took the stocking off, but the Hull says the dullness –
it was like his foot fell asleep – did not go away. “They decided not
to put the stocking back on,” he says. The doctors had never
encountered the problem before, so Hull says, although his stay was cut
two days short, it actually helped the study. And he’s still eligible
for the longer study, which doesn’t involve the science socks.

Hull says lying down for only a couple of days was pretty easy (Go figure.) and he’s still up for the three month study.

“Damn, yes,” he says. “The long term was the whole reason I signed up.”

— Dusti Rhodes