Ice Bound: One Woman's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole - Hardcover

Nielsen, Jerri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 009185623X ISBN 13: 9780091856236

Publisher: Ebury Press, 2001

Synopsis

The inhabitants of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station at Antarctica are known as "Polies". They live in almost total darkness for nine months of the year, in temperatures as low as 100 degrees below zero, with no way in or out before the spring. This is Jerri Nielsen's account of her one year sabbatical there. She was the physician for 41 researchers, construction workers and support staff, and it was her job to keep the "Polies" mentally and physically fit in a hostile environment.

About this title

Review:

Serving as doctor to the Americans "wintering over" at the South Pole in 1999, Jerri Nielsen made headlines when she discovered a lump in her breast that a self-administered biopsy revealed to be an aggressive, fast-growing cancer. No flights in or out of Antarctica are possible during the continent's long winter, and Nielsen's account of giving herself chemotherapy while she and her fellow "Polies" waited for the weather to break is even more gripping than the news reports at the time. She's candid about her pain and fear; the media battle waged by her embittered ex-husband makes her ordeal even more challenging. Interestingly enough, however, this high drama does not overshadow Nielsen's deeper narrative of a woman who came "to the Ice" seeking new meaning in a life shattered by divorce and estrangement from her children. In the back-to-basics world of Antarctic medicine, with outdated equipment, few supplies and no assistants, she rediscovered her vocation as a doctor, free from the imperatives of corporate-directed medicine. More importantly, Nielsen found spiritual solace in the world's most extreme environment, where she was "introduced slowly to the notion of giving more than you have and using less than you need ... of knowing that all you really own are your own thoughts". She makes the glories of the Pole so palpable that by the end readers will not even be surprised when she signs an e-mail to her family, "from the wonderful Ice". --Wendy Smith

Review:

Nielsen's is a genuinely thrilling story, and her directness makes Ice Bound a gripping book. -- Sunday Times Magazine, January 20, 2002

About this edition

• Publisher: Ebury Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 009185623X
• ISBN 13: 9780091856236
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 382