I remember reading about this. What a shame she didn't make it. She was quite a woman:
Nearly a decade after she was rescued from a remote Antarctic research station after diagnosing herself with breast cancer, Dr. Jerri Nielsen died early Tuesday, her brother said. She was 57.
Nielsen had been fighting the latest round of cancer for the past five years, brother Eric Cahill said. She died just before 4 a.m. in Massachusetts, surrounded by her family, he said.
"She would want to be remembered for the adventure and, you know, living every day, and not just the sickness," said sister-in-law Diana Cahill. "She was very much active and still even doing talks as late as March of this year. Then the last month or so, she was pretty sick."
Nielsen caught the nation's attention in 1999, when she found a lump in her breast as a 47-year-old physician stationed at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station.
After finding the lump in June, she diagnosed herself with breast cancer and began treating herself using chemotherapy agents that the U.S. Air Force parachuted to the station the next month.
It was later revealed, according to a March 2009 article in the Detroit Free Press newspaper, that Nielsen -- an emergency room doctor from Cleveland, Ohio -- performed a biopsy on herself with the help of non-medical crew, who practiced using needles on a raw chicken.
While treating herself, Nielsen carried on her duties as the sole doctor for the 41-person research group. She consulted with her doctors in the United States by e-mail and teleconference. They recommended that she return as soon as possible for treatment.
Although flights in support of the South Pole program don't usually begin until late October or early November, the start of Antarctic spring, it was October 6 when two planes set out on what was dubbed Operation Deep Freeze.
Ten days and a handful of stops later -- California, Hawaii, Pago Pago, New Zealand and then Antarctica -- rescuers braved temperatures of nearly minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit to land a ski-equipped plane at the pole, drop off a replacement doctor and pick up Nielsen. It was the earliest such flight attempted.
Once she returned home and was treated, Nielsen's cancer went into remission, and she wrote about her experience in a best-selling book, "Icebound." She married and became a public speaker, Diana Cahill said.
But in 2005, Nielsen's cancer returned in her bones and liver, later spreading to her brain. [link]
I was diagnosed with infiltrating intraductal breast CA with micro-metastasis to the lymph nodes in August of 2001. The tumor was triple negative, it had infiltrated into tissue outside of the ducts, it was multi-focal (there were several tumor sites throughout the breast) and they found cancer cells in the one of the sentinel lymph nodes.
Triple negative breast CA doesn't respond to hormonal treatment, leaving one of the big guns of preventive maintenance out of the treatment arsenal. This kind of tumor grows at the same rate regardless of the level of estrogen and progesterone in the host's body. Some tumors are only grow in the presence of those hormones. So they give women with that type of tumors medications to decrease the hormone level in their bloodstream. This is of no help with triple negative CA, which is also usually a more aggressive and faster growing cancer, especially in younger women (at 45, I was still considered a younger woman when it came to CA).
I underwent a modified radical mastectomy and a course of chemotherapy consisting of 4 doses of Adriamycin and Cytoxin spread out over 3 months. For the first 5 years after treatment, I had a 22% chance of recurrence. That might not sound like a big deal, but considering the probability of getting cancer to begin with was 14% at the time (not sure if that has changed since then), it wasn't much comfort. Plus, if the Adriamycin and Cytoxin failed (the atomic bomb mixture of chemo treatment at the time), there weren't many other options. But I once read that after the 5 year point, the chances of recurrence decreases year by year.
I rarely think about it, until reading about someone like Dr. Nielsen. I don't think cancer will be returning. If it does after all this time, I will probably be nearly as shocked as I was learning about it the first time around. However, I will never again be in the same position as I was when first diagnosed - the doctor told me over the phone while my husband was at work and I was home alone with my children who were ages 10, 12 and 17. Now there was a test of motherhood. Learning news like that without losing it in front of the kids.
Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I think there's some truth in that.
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