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medpundit |
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Tuesday, December 24, 2002Sarandon, most recently on the big screen with Goldie Hawn in "The Banger Sisters," will star as Dr. Jerri Nielsen, who learned she had breast cancer while stationed at the South Pole in the dead of winter, making it virtually impossible for her to get out or for a medical team to get in to help her. Neilsen was an emergency room doctor from Ohio when she joined a research team going to the remote Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Soon after the eight month winter of nearly total darkness began, she discovered a lump on her breast. She did a biopsy on herself, with limited resources and help only from others at the station, none of whom were doctors. She sent those results by email to specialists who said she had an aggressive cancer. The others at the station tried to give her chemotherapy with supplies air-dropped by volunteer pilots until Nielsen was finally brought back to the United States, where she underwent surgery and is now cancer-free. The story of how the 46-year-old physician found treatment was the stuff of headlines in 1999 and is said to be an extremely inspiring one. What's so inspiring about someone putting others at risk to assuage her own fear and anxiety? It always bothered me that Dr. Nielsen was portrayed by the media as a "hero" when she asked other, untrained, personnel at the station to perform her biopsy, then risked the lives of pilots - first to get her chemotherapy supplies, then to get her out of the South Pole in dangerous weather. She did this for a condition that was not immediately life-threatening. That isn't inspiring or heroic. It's selfish. posted by Sydney on 12/24/2002 12:08:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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