Jerri Nielsen was trying to escape monsters in her personal life when she volunteered to work at a South Pole research station in 1998. What she ended up with, in 11 Antarctic months, was a near-death experience, international celebrity status, and a new outlook on life.
Dramatic as it was, the experience didn’t solve Nielsen’s personal problems. (This is, after all, a true story. Fiction might have ended differently.) But it did give the former emergency room doctor the perspective that comes to those who have taken a long, gard look into the abyss.
“Ice bound” is a family story. Or rather, the story of one family being torn apart by emotional abuse and infidelity, while another pulls together to deal with a serious illness in its ranks. It’s also a cancer survivor’s story, with all the medical minutiae and soul-searching that suggests. Most of all, though, “Ice bound” is the story of ordinary prople doing extraordinary things under some of the most difficult conditions on the planet.
Nielson first came to the world’s attention in the summer of 1999, when she performed a biopsy on herself (using ice as her only anesthetic) and discovered that she was suffering from an aggressive form of breast cancer.
The situation was certainly dramatic. Nielsen was the only doctor within 600 miles, trapped on the ice in the middle of the polar winter with litter in the way of advanced medical supplies. Her sole link with the outside world came through e-mail, and that worked only when a communication satellite passed over the Pole.
Despite Nielsen’s request that publicity be avoided, her employer a subcontractor to the National Science Foundation was overwhelmed by media interest in the “South Pole doctor.” Although NSF didn’t release her name, reporters quickly filled in the blanks from information that was released. Nielsen’s family and friends were soon fielding a barrage of interview requests back in the United States. Her ex-husband, with whom she had gone through a bitter divorce, told reporters that Nielsen was a bad mother who had abandoned her children and was probably making up the whole thing to get attention.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the world, Nielsen’s odds didn’t look particularly good. Under the best of circumstances, women with her type and stage of breast cancer have a 50/50 chance of survival. And the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station hardly provided the best of circumstances.
In temperatures cold enough to coagulate jet fuel, 41 people were living and working in perpetual exterior darkness under a polar dome designed to house a staff of 17. As the medic, it was Nielsen’s job to keep the scientists and onsite construction crew healthy until fresh personnel and supplies would arrive wuth the coming of the Antarctic spring.
As Nielsen’s cancer progressed, though, the doctor increasingly became the patient. Because it was too cold at that point to land an airplane at the Pole, the NSF arranged to have plenty of help administering her weekly chemotherapy sessions.
Following directions from a stateside oncologist, a welder aand a maintenance man on the base learned to administer the IVs. A heavy equipment mechanic mixed the potentially deadly drugs and monitored the IV drips. Others at the station videotaped the sessions and worked to keep the communications lines open so doctors 9000 miles away could give advice if something went wrong.
By the time an air National Guard LC-130 made the coldest-ever landing at the Pole, with zero, on October 16, Nielsen had to be carried to the plane. Once she was in America, the NFS slipped her past waiting reporters and she was taken directly to Indiana University Hospital. There she had a lumpectomy (later she was forced to have a full mastectomy) and more chemotherapy.
Behind her on the Pole, she left the closest friends she had ever made a group she rightly calls modern day heroes. Unfortunately. “Ice Bound,” Nielsen’s account of the ordeal, has a rushed and almost amateur quality to it. It reads in places like it’s the product of a vanity publisher.
The good doctor isn’t always a sympathetic character, either, leaving her old life in shambles and heading to the Pole while her father was seemingly on his death bed. Even now, more than 15 months after Nielsen’s emergency evacuation from the Pole, she hasn’t been able to arrange a reunion with her three teenage children.
But taken as a whole. ”Ice Bound” is a worthwhile read. The details of life at the fringes of human development are fascinating, and the stages of anger, depression, and anguish Nielsen passes through ring true even to a reader who hasn’t been faced with a terminal illness or been estranged from loved ones.
At one point, Nielsen writes that Antarctica is a “blank slate on which you could write your soul.” In “ Ice Bound,” Nielsen bares her soul warts, frostbite, and all.
Jerri Nielsen was trying to escape monsters in her personal life when she volunteered to work at a South Pole research station in 1998. What she ended up with, in 11 Antarctic months, was a near-death experience, international celebrity status, and a new outlook on life.Dramatic as it was, the experience didn’t solve Nielsen’s personal problems. (This is, after all, a true story. Fiction might have ended differently.) But it did give the former emergency room doctor the perspective that comes to those who have taken a long, gard look into the abyss.“Ice bound” is a family story. Or rather, the story of one family being torn apart by emotional abuse and infidelity, while another pulls together to deal with a serious illness in its ranks. It’s also a cancer survivor’s story, with all the medical minutiae and soul-searching that suggests. Most of all, though, “Ice bound” is the story of ordinary prople doing extraordinary things under some of the most difficult conditions on the planet.Nielson first came to the world’s attention in the summer of 1999, when she performed a biopsy on herself (using ice as her only anesthetic) and discovered that she was suffering from an aggressive form of breast cancer.The situation was certainly dramatic. Nielsen was the only doctor within 600 miles, trapped on the ice in the middle of the polar winter with litter in the way of advanced medical supplies. Her sole link with the outside world came through e-mail, and that worked only when a communication satellite passed over the Pole.Despite Nielsen’s request that publicity be avoided, her employer a subcontractor to the National Science Foundation was overwhelmed by media interest in the “South Pole doctor.” Although NSF didn’t release her name, reporters quickly filled in the blanks from information that was released. Nielsen’s family and friends were soon fielding a barrage of interview requests back in the United States. Her ex-husband, with whom she had gone through a bitter divorce, told reporters that Nielsen was a bad mother who had abandoned her children and was probably making up the whole thing to get attention.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the world, Nielsen’s odds didn’t look particularly good. Under the best of circumstances, women with her type and stage of breast cancer have a 50/50 chance of survival. And the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station hardly provided the best of circumstances.
In temperatures cold enough to coagulate jet fuel, 41 people were living and working in perpetual exterior darkness under a polar dome designed to house a staff of 17. As the medic, it was Nielsen’s job to keep the scientists and onsite construction crew healthy until fresh personnel and supplies would arrive wuth the coming of the Antarctic spring.
As Nielsen’s cancer progressed, though, the doctor increasingly became the patient. Because it was too cold at that point to land an airplane at the Pole, the NSF arranged to have plenty of help administering her weekly chemotherapy sessions.
Following directions from a stateside oncologist, a welder aand a maintenance man on the base learned to administer the IVs. A heavy equipment mechanic mixed the potentially deadly drugs and monitored the IV drips. Others at the station videotaped the sessions and worked to keep the communications lines open so doctors 9000 miles away could give advice if something went wrong.
By the time an air National Guard LC-130 made the coldest-ever landing at the Pole, with zero, on October 16, Nielsen had to be carried to the plane. Once she was in America, the NFS slipped her past waiting reporters and she was taken directly to Indiana University Hospital. There she had a lumpectomy (later she was forced to have a full mastectomy) and more chemotherapy.
Behind her on the Pole, she left the closest friends she had ever made a group she rightly calls modern day heroes. Unfortunately. “Ice Bound,” Nielsen’s account of the ordeal, has a rushed and almost amateur quality to it. It reads in places like it’s the product of a vanity publisher.
The good doctor isn’t always a sympathetic character, either, leaving her old life in shambles and heading to the Pole while her father was seemingly on his death bed. Even now, more than 15 months after Nielsen’s emergency evacuation from the Pole, she hasn’t been able to arrange a reunion with her three teenage children.
But taken as a whole. ”Ice Bound” is a worthwhile read. The details of life at the fringes of human development are fascinating, and the stages of anger, depression, and anguish Nielsen passes through ring true even to a reader who hasn’t been faced with a terminal illness or been estranged from loved ones.
At one point, Nielsen writes that Antarctica is a “blank slate on which you could write your soul.” In “ Ice Bound,” Nielsen bares her soul warts, frostbite, and all.
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