INTERNET RESCUE

Jerri Nielsen, a physician from Ohio, has the internet to thank for saving her life. When she accepted a job in Antarctica as the only doctor at the Amundsen-Scott Pole Station, she could never have anticipated how technology would help her.

                Antarctica is the most isolated place in earth. Every year, scientists from all over the world travel to work in conditions of extreme cold, with temperatures reaching minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to being cold the atmosphere is very dry and windy. Between February and October each year it gets so cold that parts of the continent are inaccessible. Around the middle of the continent, near the South Pole Station, the cold weather causes plane fuel to change consistency, making impossible for aircraft to land. Thus between February and October, the team of researchers at the station must live together in isolation.

                Numerous research stations exist on Antarctica and staff may need may need medical treatment for anything from a cold to a bad cut. The extreme cold wind and dryness of the Antarctic environment can also cause many ailments. Hence, at each research stations, a doctor must be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When jerry Nielsen saw an ad in a medical journal for doctors to work at the U.S. Antarctic research base, she was interested. She applied for the job, talked things over with her family, and decided to go. By November 1998, Jerry was settling into her new home for the year, an orange metal shack in Antarctica, which also doubled as her clinic.

                Jerry had previously practiced emergency medicine only in the sterile confines of a hospital. For the next few months, she experienced a totally different working environment. She discovered that the weather played havoc with conventional treatments; adhesive bandages would no stick, and wounds took longer to heal. As a result, Jerry found it necessary to improvise and think of new ways to care for her patients. Jerry, also found herself looking at relationships with her patients in a new light.  She was the only doctor to a group of forty people, unlike in the U.S., her patients became her friends.

                In March 1999, a few weeks after the last flight until November had left the station, Jerry felt a hard lump in her right breast. She kept it secret from her colleagues, but during the following months the lump grew in size. In June she decided to inform her supervisor. Two days later, after exchanging e-mails with the Denver-based doctor in charge of the Antarctic medical programs, a colleague helped Jerri perform the lump in an attempt to draw out fluid. When no fluid came out, Jerri knew the lump was cancerous.

                Over the next few months, Jerri relied on e-mails from doctors in the U.S. for medical support, and from her family for moral support. Necessary medical supplies and cancer-fighting drugs were successfully airdropped and Jerri, with the help of her colleagues, began treatment to fight disease. On October 16, 1999, seven months after discovering the lump, Jerri and another ailing colleague were picked up from the South Pole, and a replacement physician was dropped off.

                Jerri had lump removed back in the U.S. Medical tests showed that the cancer had not spread to other parts of her body. Thanks to the internet, Jerri made it home alive and in 2001, published a book about her remarkable experience. 

 

Activities: Copy the whole text in your notebook. Look for synonyms of the underlined frases, skimm the whole text and each of the 9 paragraphs, find the word with suffixes and make a list of their meaning. Translation will be done in the classroom under teacher supervision.