She was regaining her strength, and her hair started to come back-along with her memory, which had been fogged by illness and chemo. The tumor had been successfully removed and there was no sign of disease. Jerri and I hit it off immediately and got to work. But because there was so much interest in her story of survival, she agreed to write a book about it-if only to get it right, and make sure the whole team got credit. She was grateful to be rescued, but horrified by the attention. government mobilized to save her.Ī rapt international audience soon learned that the doctor had performed her own biopsy without anesthesia, and the media documented every step of a dangerous midwinter airdrop of chemotherapy drugs and equipment, followed by the heroic “extraction”-the first-ever landing of a C-130 at the Pole in 60-below-zero temperatures-that swept Jerri off the ice for emergency treatment. But when Jerri discovered a cancerous lump in her breast, her family in the States, her colleagues at the Pole, a medical team in Indiana, and the U.S. At the time, there was no way in or out of the Pole until spring. She had been the only doctor at the Amundsen-Scott Research Station, charged with caring for the 40 other volunteers who stayed behind during the dark, brutal Antarctic winter. Six months earlier, in October 1999, Jerri had made headlines for being the object of a daring airlift rescue at the South Pole. I had been summoned to her beach house in North Carolina to interview for the job of collaborating with her on her memoirs.

She’d had a course of radiation and would be on chemo for the rest of her life. Jerri said the cancer had spread to her bones.

She had an incredible laugh-something between a giggle and a guffaw. The first time I laid eyes on Jerri Nielsen she was hairless as a newborn kangaroo, draped in a flowing caftan, holding a glass of white wine, and laughing.

Icebound jerri nielsen