Increased the winter population from the usual 27 or 28 to 41. The dilapidated South Pole station was seriously overpopulated that winter because a construction crew was in the process of building a replacement for the 25-year-old dome that had been the base for Antarctic research since 1975.
She's also good at communicating the camaraderie and friendships that develop in close quarters and the wacky distractions that people in isolation devise for themselves. We hear about the clumsinessĪnd accidents caused by the rarefied atmosphere, the memory loss that almost everyone experiences (''What's that country, in the Mediterranean, you know, that's shaped like a boot?''), theĬrabbiness that inevitably surfaces, the food lust. Nielsen makes those abstract threats vividly real. The relentless cold, wind and darkness at the pole, all exacerbated by the thin air, which makes the 6,000-foot altitude feel like 11,000 feet, have been well documented. Was a blank slate on which you could write your soul.'' ''The route to the pole was, after all, an inner journey. She writes in a passage from ''Ice Bound'' that captures both the lyricism in her writing and her philosophical mode of thinking. ''Life sang out, and every small breath was a triumph against nothingness,'' Once at the pole, though Nielsen functioned not only as doctor but as nurse, orderly and floor swabber in her small clinic, she quickly found herself at one with the ice. Do pack grease for your camera, some herbal tea,Ī couple of favorite recipes and lots of CD's. Ditto the shampoo - you get only two showers a week.
Within weeks of answering a want ad in The Annals of Emergency Medicine, she had been vetted and hiredĪnd had set about packing: Forget the 10 bottles of deodorant, she was told - once winter hits, no one uses it anyway.
Sound, a team player, a doctor who could do everything from trauma surgery to routine dental work, a pretty good cook. She looked to be a good candidate for the grueling experience of eight months of isolation, extreme cold and darkness - physically and psychologically $23.95.Įrri Nielsen was a 46-year-old emergency room doctor, stressed out, bitterly divorced, estranged from her three teenage children, when she decided toĮscape it all by spending almost a year at the South Pole in 1999. The story of the woman who was at the South Pole when she discovered she had breast cancer. FebruThe Doctor Who Came In From the Cold
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