Queen of the kick-butt women

Susan Swartz
When someone on the radio mentioned Dr. Jerri Nielsen, I smiled
and thought, “What’s she up to now?”
I didn’t expect her to die. Not our indomitable South Pole hero,
whose saga in 1999 from diagnosing her own breast cancer to being
airlifted in a 60-degrees-below-zero whiteout was more riveting
than any reality show.
You might not have remembered Jerri’s name but you’d never
forget her story.
Doctor at Antarctic research station finds lump and does her own
biopsy, drafting her polar colleagues to be her medical team. An
ironworker held the syringe. A machinist helped with her IV, a
welder assisted with her chemotherapy and medical advice came via
email and teleconference from a surgeon in Indiana.
I met Jerri Nielsen in Santa Rosa when she spoke at a breast
cancer seminar. By then she had written her book “Ice Bound” and
was looking forward to being played by Susan Sarandon in the movie
version. She’d been traveling the country raising awareness and
money for breast cancer programs and talked about the amazing club
of women she’d met along the way. Women with breast cancer who did
not suffer in silence, not a victim among them. She called them
“kick-butt women.”
I asked Jerri back then what people found most intriguing about
her story.
“It’s probably because I’m just like anybody, a middle-aged,
overweight lady going on an adventure,” she said. Although not
everyone’s idea of adventure would be to work in what Jerri called
“the highest, driest, coldest, windiest and emptiest place on
earth.”
Yet, Jerri Nielsen made it sound like the perfect midlife move,
to give up a hospital job in Ohio and go live on the ice. She took
to it, learning to love the raw beauty of the place and becoming
part of a caring, sweet eccentric community of scientists and
crew.
I think about her now. Had someone told her she was going to get
cancer at age 47 she might have never left Ohio. The cancer would
still have come but Jerri would have missed her big adventure. And
we would have missed Jerri.
During her stateside tour she said she wanted to return to
Antarctica and show it off to her mother. According to the
obituaries she did return several times to her highest, coldest
place on earth. She continued practicing medicine and speaking. She
married a fellow adventurer, a man she’d met while traveling in the
jungle and had become Jerri Nielsen Fitzgerald. The cancer, which
had gone into remission, roared back four years ago. She died at a
too-young 57.
News of Jerri’s death was quickly upstaged by celebrity obits in
that same week. If famous deaths come in threes, hers was knocked
down the list by Johnny Carson’s sidekick, an actress in a red
bathing suit and the King of Pop.
They were gifted artists and entertainers. Jerri was a person
who might never have become known had her extraordinary situation
not turned her into an ambassador of courage and chutzpah. She
reminded us to get those mammograms, do self exams and push for
better detection. Jerri often made the point that six months before
she discovered her lump she’d had a clear mammogram.
She was an everyday woman who spoke to people like my young
friend in her late 20s who’s getting a double mastectomy she hopes
will prevent the disease that killed her relatives. And to my old
friend who developed cancer in both breasts in her 60s and is alive
and healthy in her 90s.
Definitely kick-butt women.
Susan Swartz is an author and local journalist. You can also
read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear
her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is


su***@ju***********.com











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