This may seem a little off-topic — nothing church-y here — but I remember this woman’s story vividly. Like countless people around the world, I followed her dramatic rescue with wonder and awe. She inspired many.

From CNN’s website:

Nearly a decade after she was rescued from a remote Antarctic research station after diagnosing herself with breast cancer, Dr. Jerri Nielsen died early Tuesday, her brother said. She was 57.

Jerri Nielsen treated herself for breast cancer while stationed at the South Pole in 1999.

Jerri Nielsen treated herself for breast cancer while stationed at the South Pole in 1999.

Nielsen had been fighting the latest round of cancer for the past five years, brother Eric Cahill said. She died just before 4 a.m. in Massachusetts, surrounded by her family, he said.

“She would want to be remembered for the adventure and, you know, living every day, and not just the sickness,” said sister-in-law Diana Cahill. “She was very much active and still even doing talks as late as March of this year. Then the last month or so, she was pretty sick.”

Nielsen caught the nation’s attention in 1999, when she found a lump in her breast as a 47-year-old physician stationed at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station.

After finding the lump in June, she diagnosed herself with breast cancer and began treating herself using chemotherapy agents that the U.S. Air Force parachuted to the station the next month.

It was later revealed, according to a March 2009 article in the Detroit Free Press newspaper, that Nielsen — an emergency room doctor from Cleveland, Ohio — performed a biopsy on herself with the help of non-medical crew, who practiced using needles on a raw chicken.

While treating herself, Nielsen carried on her duties as the sole doctor for the 41-person research group. She consulted with her doctors in the United States by e-mail and teleconference. They recommended that she return as soon as possible for treatment.

Although flights in support of the South Pole program don’t usually begin until late October or early November, the start of Antarctic spring, it was October 6 when two planes set out on what was dubbed Operation Deep Freeze.

Ten days and a handful of stops later — California, Hawaii, Pago Pago, New Zealand and then Antarctica — rescuers braved temperatures of nearly minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit to land a ski-equipped plane at the pole, drop off a replacement doctor and pick up Nielsen. It was the earliest such flight attempted.

Once she returned home and was treated, Nielsen’s cancer went into remission, and she wrote about her experience in a best-selling book, “Icebound.” She married and became a public speaker, Diana Cahill said.

But in 2005, Nielsen’s cancer returned in her bones and liver, later spreading to her brain.

“My experience at the pole had to do with accepting things that most people fear most deeply and coming to feel that they need not be feared,” Nielsen told Psychology Today magazine in 2006. “It certainly had far more to do with peace and surrender than it did with courage. Being ‘on the ice’ was a great good fortune: It created a much greater clarity for me about what was essential in life.

“I’m not afraid of death. I’ve come to accept it as being part of life, and I think I’ve come to accept it earlier than my years because of what’s happened to me.”

Read more at the link.