"Space Fog"

"[He has experienced a renewed love of the] extraordinary, varied and complicated [realities of life on Earth]. I had the chance to have a very full mission where I accomplished everything I could have dreamed of, so I leave without any regrets. I left [space] full of renewed love for life on Earth."
"You lose the sense of gravity [in space], and that completely confuses the brain."
"It was very emotional to be able to be this extension of humanity in this completely hostile place ... I didn't feel alone."
Canadian Astronaut David Saint-Jacques

Leaving the space station in full space suit regalia "with just my visor between me and space" to perform a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk was an emotional experience. It made him feel not small and insignificant to be exposed to the limitless vastness of space, but awe in the breadth of human knowledge and the technical science and the dedicated team that enabled him to reach space and have that experience.

He was the first Canadian astronaut to use the Canadarm2 robotic arm in a "cosmic catch". Which is to say, manipulating the arm to snag a SpaceX cargo capsule to replenish supplies aboard the International Space Station. The 49-year-old Saint Jacques spent 204 days on board the space station, at one single swoop, an inordinately long period of time during which the human body must cope with the effects of weightlessness when nature has designed our bodies to react to gravity.

He was, in point of fact, an experiment in how the human body is able to cope with the loss of gravity and compensate, while bodily function and physiology begin to slowly attenuate in reflection of weightlessness in an anatomy designed for gravity. He wore a specially designed "smart shirt" as a biomonitor with implications for long-distance medical care enabling scientists to study the effects of zero gravity.

Six months aboard a space station is a long time for the human body to adapt to a fully alien exposure. Now he is fully engaged in re-adapting to a more natural environment for the human body, back on Earth. When he thinks of what he missed while away on  his mission, his family, wife and three children come first. And then it is something as simple as feeling the wind, smelling grass and tasting fresh fruit: "It makes you want to live more simply", he says of the overwhelming sense of gratitude in his return.

Saint-Jacques is helped out of the Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft just minutes after he landed in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on June 25. (Bill Ingalls/The Associated Press)

He landed back on Earth on June 24 and just recently returned to Canada following a series of medical tests and initial rehabilitation. His reward on return to the Canadian Space Agency in Montreal is time spent with his wife and children, a trip to his parents' cottage in Quebec, all the while recovering slowly from the effect of space flight. Mental recovery hasn't posed a problem for him, but physical recovery is slow as his body re-adapts. Every part of the body, from blood circulation to the head to the soles of his feet was affected by space flight.

He still suffers from dizziness and a type of light-headedness he speaks of as "space fog". But his balance has improved and he has been spared experiencing pain or vision problems which other astronauts have become familiar with. Bone loss has been "normal", he says. One concern is how the effects of radiation will play out; his exposure could make him more susceptible to cancer onset, but time will tell. Once he has fully recuperated he plans at a future date to return to Houston for the purpose of renewing his lapsed certifications and to resume his space program career.

“If I can describe it better, you come back from space where you’ve completely adapted for a long time, feeling very comfortable in space, and then very brutally your body has to re-adapt to gravity."
“Once you forget about that, it’s very comfortable, you spend hundreds of days in space, floating around, tumbling around, doing cartwheels, no problem. When you come back to Earth suddenly, you get the sense of up and down again and your brain has to learn how to match that with what you see."