PrimeTime: Survival at South Pole

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.