Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle For Survival at the South Pole

"I was prepared to love this, but ended up disliking it for several reasons.

Her voice is gruff and sounded good at first, but the pacing and reading started grating on my nerves by the end of the second CD. Like most cases, it would have been better to hire a professional reader.

More importantly, I felt Dr. Nielson is an extremely emotionally immature person. She rails against her ungrateful children who "abandoned" her and her sociopathic ex-husband (who supposedly stranged a dog in front of her, and used to drive against traffic to intimidate her). At the same time, she paints herself as an innocent, noting only briefly she had an affair because she basically emotionally had to....of course, this sounds a bit crazy. Even assuming what she says about her husband is true, any time someone is hooked up with psychos for decades, something is a little wrong with them, too. I felt her complaints about her ex and children made her look worse and made me question her own emotional stability.

At the same time, she describes her adventures at the Pole the same way I think a teenager would. She struck me as self absorbed, narcissistic and dramatic. There appears to be an enormous amount of socializing there, with all sorts of stupid parties all the time, movie nights, coffee clatches, etc. Also, I kid you not when I say that every single person and almost every single room, city, area, and numerous objects, etc. at the Pole has an annoying nickname. Another example? She develops an overt crush on someone married and doesn't hide it.

Finally, I had thought she actually did the lumpectomy herself. All she does is a needle biopsy!!! I have experienced a breast needle biopsy and while I certainly had the benefit of a topical anesthetic (which I don't think she did), it was not a big deal. After that, she is air dropped chemo, and then does IVs of chemo, with assistance via satellite each time, and a friend to help do it. Then, she is airlifted out.

Frankly, the pilots who air dropped the chemo and then airlifted her out (at the earliest, coldest time the pole had ever been flown to) are the real heroes here.

If you want to read about self medical procedures, I would suggest the kid who cut his right arm off while hiking in Utah. I haven't read it but I saw the Tom Brokaw special about it, and it was very solid. It's interesting how the parents ultimately found the kid....

"
~ Written on 2008-06-22

"Jerri Nielsen's Ice Bound came highly recommended to me. While it initially began well, it soon became obvious that the author had a lot of growing up to do. Unfortunately, the South Pole experience didn't seem to speed up the process. She is so caught up in her interpretation of events that she fails to understand or see what others are telling or showing her. I wonder if this is at the core of her family problems. The final straw for me was after reading her doctor's email assuring her that her chances for longevity were still very possible, and she immediately writes to her own family and tells them just the opposite. The fact that she had the nerve to continue scaring her family and misrepresent the doctor's analysis made me lose any sympathy I might have had for her. Jerri's mom, however, must be quite a lady, as evident by her remarks comparing her daughter's perspective on her ice family to cult. Now, I'd like to read a book about her mom, but forget the daughter! "
~ Written on 2008-04-25

"This book provides the "behind the scenes" details of the experience of Jerri Nielsen who was diagnosed with and forced to treat her own breast cancer using non-medical personnel while she was the only doctor stationed at the South Pole during polar winter. Much of the book is about her experience of life at the pole and her relationships with her fellow "Polies".

As someone who began reading this with very little knowledge of the South Pole station, I most enjoyed the information about what life is like there for the brave and crazy folks who opt to winter-over at the coldest place on earth. They are unreachable by even the most advanced aviation because jet fuel turns to Jell-o in the horrifically cold weather they experience. It was interesting to hear description of what they wore, where they slept, how they kept warm, how they entertained themselves and how they remained connected to the outside world. At the time of Dr. Nielsen's employment (1999), they only had a satellite available for a few hours a day to exchange emails and contact with their friends and family. One interesting tidbit of information, while then-President Clinton visited New Zealand all usage of the satellite was reserved for him. I know so much about this because the book includes many emails. These are edited for length but otherwise replicated in their entirety. It becomes tiresome to read other people's email including To, From, Subject etc., but in some ways provides the only true insight the book offers into the experience.

My personal response to this book is that I just don't feel that Dr. Nielsen is a reliable narrator about her personal or interior life. Whether this is her fault or that of her co-author, I cannot say. I felt that she chose to take a stance as both victim and hero as opposed to just a regular old person in a horrible situation. Her descriptions of her relationships with her estranged children and ex-husband strike me as disproportionately favorable to her as do the descriptions of her childhood, parents etc. It may not be true that she considers herself either a victim or hero, but that is what I felt the "voice" used in the book implied. It feels somehow like she is being less than honest about her internal experience of the events described or rather that her level of honesty and experience has somehow been retarded so that she is having the emotional experiences that someone would normally have much earlier in their life than at 47 years old. When compared to a memoir written by someone like Mary Karr or Jeannette Walls or even Roseanne Barr, there is a noticeable lack of honest reflection and self-awareness that should have been addressed by an editor or the co-author who, one assumes, is a professional writer. There was a great deal of telling in a narrative that should have been laden with insight, feeling and action. This absence is particularly noticeable when reading the emails from Dr. Nielsen's oncologist, Dr. Kathy Miller, which are filled with empathy, decency and passion. They give her a distinct "self" that no other person in the book has including Dr. Nielsen herself.

I can only recommend this book as an introduction to life at the South Pole. I intend to find other, better books to increase my knowledge of that fascinating place and the people who work there."
~ Written on 2007-12-06

"This book is the story of Dr. Nielsen's time working at the south pole. It is full of anecdotes of everyday events that gave me a feeling for what life must be like in such a remote place.

It reminded me a lot of science fiction and especially Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. Robinson has another book on Antarctica that is said to be very similar to Red Mars. It's uncanny how similar Dr. Nielsen's account is to science fiction stories about space colonization.

Maybe the idea of life on the frontier brings out these themes. The difficulty of life makes people work together and abandon some of the petty problems from home. That gives people a new perspective on the culture of their home.

This story also made me consider how psychologically hard cancer must be. Dr. Nielsen says being in Antarctica in some ways made it easier because she didn't have to deal with daily ups and downs as the results of many tests came back. They only had the most basic diagnostic equipment in Antarctica.

Nielsen is honest about her fear of her illness and the pain of being alienated from her kids. Although it's unlikely because of her history of cancer, I hope the powers that be approve her for more work in remote locations. "
~ Written on 2007-03-05

"The book was worth every penny and it was sent in a timely manner."
~ Written on 2007-01-29