Jerri Nielsen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jerri Lin Nielsen | |
 |
|
| Born | March 1, 1952 |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Known for | Contracted breast cancer while in Antarctica |
Jerri Lin Nielsen (born March 1, 1952) is an American physician whose harrowing medical emergency at an Antarctic research station aroused international media attention. With ghostwriter Maryanne Vollers, Nielsen's story was told in the autobiographical book Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Story of Survival at the South Pole, which relates the story of her discovery by self-examination that she had developed breast cancer while serving at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station during the Antarctic winter of 1999.
Nielsen's saga began in 1999, when she took a year's sabbatical at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on Antarctica. This perilous region experiences almost total darkness for six months of the year, and in winter the temperature remains steady at around 85 below zero Fahrenheit (−65 degrees Celsius).
In the course of her work at the research station, Nielsen discovered a lump in her breast. After consulting U.S. physicians via email, she performed a biopsy upon herself, and later began self-administered chemotherapy treatments using supplies from a risky July cargo drop to ensure her survival until conditions permitted her rescue several months later. She was picked up in an equally dangerous mid-October landing in a LC-130 Hercules.
Nielsen's case has some similarities to Dr. Leonid Rogozov's, who was forced to remove his own appendix while trapped in the Antarctic winter at Novolazarevskaya research station in 1961.
[edit] Book and film
Nielsen told her story Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Story of Survival at the South Pole, which became a New York Times bestseller.
In 2001, Dr. Nielsen was interviewed by popular TV talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell.
In 2003 CBS released a made-for-TV movie Ice Bound, starring Susan Sarandon.
In 2008, the Fox Network show House aired the episode "Frozen," in which the team must somehow, via teleconference, diagnose and treat a stricken psychiatrist at the South Pole.
