Jerri Nielsen

The cancer went into remission, but recurred seven years later, eventually causing her death in 2009 from brain metastatic disease, eleven years after initial diagnosis.

She died at her home in Southwick, Massachusetts on June 23, 2009, at age 57. She was survived by her second husband, Tom Fitzgerald; her parents, Lorine and Phil Cahill; her brothers, Scott Cahill and Eric Cahill; and her children from her previous marriage: Julia, Ben and Alex.

After being in remission, the cancer returned in 2005 and metastasized to Nielsen's brain, liver and bones, but she continued to give speeches and traveled extensively including to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Australia, Ireland, Alaska, Poland, and she returned to Antarctica several times. In October 2008, Dr. Nielsen announced that her cancer had returned in the form of a brain tumor. She was active and giving talks until March 2009, three months before her death.

With ghostwriter Maryanne Vollers, Nielsen's story was told in the autobiographical Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Story of Survival at the South Pole, which became a New York Times bestseller. The book was later adapted into Ice Bound: A Woman's Survival at the South Pole, a 2003 CBS-TV movie starring Susan Sarandon, and in 2008 became the inspiration for an episode of Fox Network show House, "Frozen", in which the team must somehow, via teleconference, diagnose and treat a stricken psychiatrist at the South Pole. The story of her rescue would be featured on The Weather Channel's When Weather Changed History in the "Rescue from the South Pole" in January 2008.

Once back in the United States, after multiple surgeries, complications and a mastectomy, Nielsen went into remission. She became a motivational speaker and a scholarship was created in her honor; she also remarried, to Tom Fitzgerald. In 2001, Nielsen was named Irish American of the Year by Irish America magazine.

In 1998, during the southern winter, at a time when the station is physically cut off from the rest of the world, she developed breast cancer. Nielsen teleconferenced with medical personnel in the United States and had to operate on herself in order to extract tissue samples for analysis. A military plane was later dispatched to the pole to airdrop equipment and medications. Her condition remained life-threatening, and the first plane to land at the station in the spring was sent several weeks earlier than planned, despite adverse weather conditions, to take her to the U.S. as soon as possible. Her ordeal attracted a great amount of attention from the media, and Nielsen later wrote an autobiographical book recounting her story.

While at Ohio University she also met Jay Nielsen, who she subsequently married. They had three children before divorcing acrimoniously in 1998. She continued to work as a physician in various medical fields, mostly as an ER surgeon.

In 1998, Nielsen was hired for a one-year contract to serve as the medical doctor at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on Antarctica. This isolated region experiences almost total darkness for the six months of winter, during which the temperature remains around −60 °C (−76 °F). During this period, the station is completely cut off from the world, as no planes fly there between mid-February and late October. The "winterover" crew is thus stranded and entirely autonomous.

Nielsen's case shares some similarities with that of Dr. Leonid Rogozov, who had to remove his own appendix while spending the winter at Novolazarevskaya research station in 1961. Since this incident, that station has always been staffed with two doctors.

Dr. Jerri Lin Nielsen (née Cahill; March 1, 1952 – June 23, 2009) was an American physician with extensive emergency room experience, who self-treated her breast cancer while stationed at Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica until she could be evacuated safely.

Born as Jerri Lin Cahill in Salem, Ohio in March 1, 1952, a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio, Nielsen was the oldest child and only daughter of Philip and Lorine Cahill, who raised their family in a rural area just outside Salem. She graduated pre-med from Ohio University in Athens before entering the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo and graduating with a medical degree.