PrimeTime: Survival at South Pole

ByABC News
July 18, 2001, 4:33 PM

July 19 -- Jerri Nielsen, the doctor whose dramatic rescue from the South Pole after she was stricken with breast cancer made headlines worldwide, plans to return to Antarctica as a physician on a cruise ship.

After undergoing treatment, including a mastectomy, in the United States, Nielsen is apparently cancer-free. She spent the spring chasing tornadoes with a friend throughout Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas.

This winter, she is planning to return to Antarctica with her parents and siblings to work as the doctor on a cruise ship.

An Antarctic Adventure

Nielsen was one of 41 pioneers who signed on to brave the harsh conditions of the South Pole for a full year as part of a research team.

At the age of 46, Nielsen was divorced from her husband of 23 years and had spent nearly two decades as a family practice and emergency room physician. She saw an advertisement for a medical doctor needed to join a South Pole research team sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

"I felt a prickling sensation up and down my skin," she recalled in her book Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole.

Nielsen took the job. "I believe in geographic cures they allow you to throw all your cards in the air and see where they land," she wrote, "then pick them back up and deal them again."

Doing a Biopsy on Herself

In March 1999, a month after the station closed for the Antarctic winter, Nielsen discovered a lump in her breast.

"It got bigger, it got harder and more fixed," she recalled. Her first thought, she said, "was that I probably had cancer and that I would probably die at the pole And that was all right."

Her lymph nodes began to swell, and she knew it could be serious. She e-mailed doctors in the United States, who replied that she needed a biopsy right away. But for the 8 ½-month, pitch-black, dangerously cold Antarctic winter, Nielsen was completely unreachable. There was no way in or out of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.