Most of us will never become doctors but most of us do become patients at one time or another.  Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald was both patient and doctor in a heroic surgery she performed on herself while stationed in Antarctica at the heart of its bone-chilling winter.  News of her surgery for breast cancer spread around the world in 1999 and now the news of her death, from a recurrence of that cancer, is also making headlines.

Nielsen FitzGerald was one of 41 people stationed at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station during the winter of 1999 when she first discovered a lump in her breast.  She hoped to keep it a secret until sub-zero temperatures eased and air travel became safe again but her condition quickly grew worse, making her much too sick to remain silent about her medical condition.

When the biopsy Nielsen FitzGerald performed on herself in July proved positive for cancer, she enlisted the help of a machinist, who helped with testing slides and her IV apparatus, and a welder, who helped with her chemotherapy.  Satellite-based email service enabled Nielsen FitzGerald to communicate with doctors in the United States, who arranged for the US Air Force to deliver medical supplies and anti-cancer drugs by way of an air drop conducted during treacherous blackout conditions.

In October, when the Southern Hemisphere’s winter was turning to early spring, Nielsen FitzGerald was airlifted out of the station by a flight crew from the Air National Guard.  This risky rescue made history as one of the earliest spring flights ever made to the polar station.  Temperatures were rising and reached 58 degrees below zero at the time of rescue.

Once back in the US, Nielsen FitzGerald underwent multiple surgeries, including a mastectomy, and eventually the cancer went into remission until 2005.  She recounted her medical ordeal in a book, Ice Bound: A Doctor’s Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole, which became a best seller and a made-for-TV movie.  Nielsen FitzGerald spent the past ten years, since her rescue, traveling the world lecturing about how cancer changed her life and she worked as a roving doctor in hospital emergency rooms throughout the Northeast.

By last October, the cancer had spread to her brain.  Nielsen FitzGerald died on Tuesday, June 23, at her home in Southwick, Massachusetts.  She is survived by her husband of three years, her parents, two brothers, and three children from an earlier marriage.