Nielsen, the only physician on a staff of forty-one people, discovered a lump in her breast. It is an adventure tale in the true sense as Jerri Nielsen travels through more than just geography and finds herself at the end.The Antarctic winter, with temperatures 100 degrees below zero, shuts supply lines down completely conditions are too treacherous for planes and boats and the only connection with the rest of the world is satellite hook-up. This book may not be great literature, but it is a good read. While being alone, she finds a community. Nielsen's account is particularly compelling because she is a doctor-because she went to help others and then found that she needed to ask for help. How these experiences change the individuals reflects on other events that we may share in spirit even if we have not spent a winter at the South Pole.įinally, Ice Bound tells the story of a person fighting cancer horribly and completely alone, as all those who fight cancer are in essence alone, but made more extreme by her geographical isolation and inaccessibility.
The story of her life and her reasons for choosing an adventure in the most remote place on earth may be idiosyncratic, but they reflect the motivations of other explorers and workers to search, take risks, and expose themselves to danger. Finally, Nielsen explains the relationships among the 41 people who together go through a hazardous, strenuous, challenging, and possibly deadly experience and must depend on each other and, in doing so, come to trust and care for each other.Īs a doctor, Nielsen gives a unique insight into this process and its hazards and benefits. There are power failures, fires, frostbite, boredom, memory loss, nausea, and getting lost. Then there are the perils of living at the South Pole-an adventure of its own. The adjustments humans must make to the extreme cold-the layers of clothing, changes in eating and living, and precautions-are explained as Nielsen approaches them in a state of wonder, as excited as a child preparing for backpacking for the first time. The book first tells the story of a year at the South Pole, from the preparations-the physical examinations and psychological testing, the travel and provisions-to the acclimatisation to the cold and adaptations to hypoxia when living at 11 000 feet above sea level.
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