It's about how and if you truly were ever alive

Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald was working at the South Pole when she first diagnosed herself with Breast Cancer in 1999. Researchers stationed at the South Pole through the Winter months are completely isolated from the world - the weather prohibits access by any type of transportation (sea or air). She self-treated her condition until a National Guard C-130 rescued and removed her very early in the Spring when the temperatures had risen to 58 degrees below zero. Coincidently, I had the opportunity to meet the National Guard Colonel who piloted the mission and hear his first hand telling of the rescue story.

Dr. Fitzgerald died yesterday after a recurrence of her cancer in 2005.

"More and more as I am here and see what life really is, I understand that it is not when or how you die but how and if you truly were ever alive," she wrote in an e-mail to her parents in June, 1999 from the South Pole.