Facing Death on the Ice.(Jerri Nielsen)(Brief Article)(Interview)

In 1998, bitterly divorced and estranged from her children, Jerri Nielsen, 46, an Ohio doctor, went to the South Pole on a year's contract to care for 40 U.S. scientists and construction workers. There, she developed aggressive breast cancer. Using only ice for anesthesia, she did her own biopsy with the help of colleagues-- welders, carpenters and plumbers--whom she trained on potatoes and yams. Later, through satellite videoconferences, her Stateside oncologist monitored the chemotherapy administered by her team. Nielsen prepared to die. But New York Air National Guard pilots performed a risky rescue mission and brought her out. In remission now, Nielsen has written "Ice Bound," a memoir of her time at the pole. She spoke with NEWSWEEK's Vibhuti Patel in New York.

PATEL: Originally, you'd planned to write about how extreme cold and isolation affects the body?

NIELSEN: Yes, because no meaningful research has been done on a community in sensory deprivation.

Talk about sensory deprivation at the pole.

There's no sense of time, no future or past. People go to sleep when they're tired, get up when they're awake. There's no day-night cycle. There's no telephone, no mail, no bills to pay. It's freeing. You pay attention to what's inside yourself--like people in a monastery--and to others around you. The information inside--I call it the voice of God-- is inside each of us but we don't know how to turn off the chaos of modern life long enough to hear it. There's no pressure to talk. Living in such close proximity, the only privacy you have is in your own mind.

What were the high points for you?

The people. The pole is nothing; it's 360 degrees of flat white ice with a blue sky in the summer, and in the winter it's black for six months. What's important is the journey, living there and surviving it. It teaches you so much because it's so extreme, even its beauty. After a while, you see shades of blue, gray, crystalline in the flatness; the ice is carved by the wind. You learn that the essentials are food, shelter and companionship. We're pack animals, we depend on each other, we need to help each other. And we need to occupy our minds, we need to explain primal questions. Modern life is too complex; you feel empty inside because you don't have time to chill out and have real, meaningful relationships. As a doctor and a mother, I never had time to think.