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Hang tough, ‘Ice Bound’ physician tells UT medical students |
| By
Cynthia Nowak |
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Oct 28, 2008
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| Dr. Jerri Nielsen talked to first-year medical student Amber Graham, right, while classmates, from left, Amy Dannemiller, Rachel Foot and Heather Martin listened. |
She had them from “There’s not one person in this room who doesn’t belong here.” Dr. Jerri Nielsen, author of best-seller
Ice Bound: A Doctor’s Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole, had no problem keeping a full house of medical students rapt when she spoke Oct. 17 on Health Science Campus.
As a physician who gained international fame in 1999 when she developed breast cancer while serving as the sole physician at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, she had a remarkable story to share with her audience. A 1977 graduate of the former Medical College of Ohio and a down-to-earth divorced mother of three who said her dream was to be either “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” or Dr. Beverly Crusher of “Star Trek: Next Generation,” she could connect with the day-to-day struggles of tomorrow’s physicians.
“I was trying not to drown in medical school,” she recalled. “I took extra hematology classes instead of vacation.”
The game is worth the candle — and then some, she told the students: “You will save lives, you will alleviate someone’s suffering. I know that you’re suffering yourself right now, but try to remember what an awesome opportunity you’ve been given. You’re especially tough and you’ll make it.”
Nielsen also was honored with an endowed scholarship in her name, which was formally announced the next day when she gave a talk in Main Campus’ Nitschke Hall.
Both audiences experienced Nielsen’s Antarctica service in entertaining and sometimes-salty narratives. “Just remember what they say,” she noted. “‘There’s no such thing as an ugly woman in Antarctica.’”
Her voice still reflecting the awe of her first arrival at the South Pole, she described the highs: “When winter approaches, the sky — which for three solid months has been 24-hour sun as bright as a welder’s torch — washes the entire landscape in the pinks and oranges of sunset.”
And the lows: “What you give up when you go to the South Pole is your ability to move around anywhere you want, and your right to privacy. And you get two-minute showers twice a week.”
The only doctor for more than 100 hard-working people at the bottom of the world, Nielsen ran the aptly named Hard Truth Medical Clinic after a crash course in frontier medicine and dentistry with no support staff — or even a functioning X-ray machine. Halfway into the winter season, she discovered a suspicious lump on her breast.
“I didn’t tell anyone [at the station] for three months,” she said. “There was no way in or out. Why should I worry everyone?” Instead, she organized the clinic’s equipment and medications for every possible emergency into plastic bags with detailed instructions. “I taught two guys to be my assistants, but really I was training them to be doctors in case I were to die.”
Pain finally drove her to share her condition. “Not because I wanted to be rescued, because I didn’t think that was possible, but because I was in such pain I thought I was going to die soon,” she said. “So many strange things happen in the Antarctic that we don’t understand, like the effects on the human body. If I died, they wouldn’t have anyone. I wanted to have my assistants taken off duty to get medical training.”
When a self-performed biopsy confirmed her diagnosis, she began chemotherapy, using drugs delivered to the station in its first-ever off-summer airdrop. In the total darkness of the Antarctic winter, “we put out everything we could burn and the Air Force flew over and managed to parachute six packages.”
Ultimately the tumor became resistant to the available drugs and Nielsen — now an unwilling international celebrity — was airlifted out by the 109th Airlift Wing of the New York Air National Guard. Following years of treatment, her cancer went into remission, only to return. “It went to my liver and my bones. In spite of that, I got re-married and had an incredible life,” she said. After the publication of her book, she traveled the world, meeting people and giving inspirational talks.
In all her speeches, she discounts her own heroism. “The heroes were the people who rescued me and life’s cowboys I worked with,” she said. “At the Pole, I learned that we’re nothing without each other, that pulling together gives this job its meaning.
“There’s no end to life until your last breath,” said the irrepressible Nielsen, who pulled off her wig during her meeting with UT medical students. “I have a brain tumor. I’m now on full brain irradiation and I will be dead soon. I wanted to tell you that not to be a downer, but because when I look at you, I see that I had an incredible life, and you are my children, you are my future. Thank you for making a big sacrifice to enter into one of the best things you will ever, ever know.”
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