At nearly 3,000 meters of altitude, in the most isolated place on the planet, the base doctor discovered that the most difficult patient to save had become herself.
It was March 1999 when Jerri Nielsen, head of the American Amundsen-Scott station in the South Pole, heard a nodule about five centimetres breast.
As a doctor, he immediately realized that he needed a biopsy.
But outside the base there was antarctic winter.
Forty-one people were now isolated for months, surrounded by extreme temperatures, almost continuous dark and conditions that made it impossible to use the track normally. There was no possibility to book a flight and reach a hospital.
It was necessary to turn a small scientific station into something that resembled, at least by necessity, a medical department.
In the United States some specialists began to follow Nielsen remotely through e-mail and telemedicine. To understand for sure what was happening, however, it was necessary to take and analyze a sample of the fabric.
It was here that the story assumed almost incredible contours.
A base welder exercised the necessary procedures using food. When the moment of real biopsy came, he helped Nielsen while she, lying on the table, explained to him step by step what to do.
There was another problem: the station's laboratory did not have suitable equipment.
A colleague then set a camera, a microscope and a computer. The samples could be photographed and images sent via the Internet to specialists who were thousands of miles away.
The answer confirmed what Nielsen feared.
It was a breast cancer.
At that point the calendar became part of the diagnosis. There were still months to the normal reopening of air links, but waiting without intervention would have meant to let the disease advance.
In July 1999, during the polar night, a military aircraft reached the area. He couldn't land.
He then overwhelmed the station and dropped with the parachute medicines, equipment and chemotherapy drugs.
Jerri Nielsen began treatment at the South Pole.
And as he faced nausea, weakness and loss of hair, he continued to do the work for which he had arrived there: taking care of the other members of the expedition.
She was at the same time medical and patient, in a structure that had not been designed to address an oncological emergency.
With the passing of weeks, however, waiting became too risky.
An extraordinary evacuation began.
The LC-130 skiers could reach the South Pole, but the cold was a huge limit. Around 50 degrees below zero, fuel, plumbing and even the possibility of rekindling engines could turn a landing into a trap.
Two New York Air Guard aircraft arrived at McMurdo base and attacked a weather window.
For days time did not give anything.
Then, on October 16, 1999, conditions changed enough to try.
An LC-130 of the 109th Air Force Storm departed from McMurdo and after about three hours reached the South Pole.
When he touched the track, the temperature was close to the operating limit.
The engines were never turned off.
To stop them would mean to risk not succeeding again.
The operation had to be very quick: get the doctor off to replace Nielsen, board her and leave the station immediately.
The plane remained on the ice for just 22 minutes.
Then he decolled.
Jerri Nielsen was finally on board.
About seven months had passed since the day he found that nodule.
In the United States he was subjected to surgery and other therapies. The tumor entered remission.
In 2005, however, the disease returned and later spread to other parts of the body. Nielsen continued to practice medicine and publicly tell what had happened during that winter.
He died on June 23, 2009, aged 57.
His story remains extraordinary not only for the place where it happened.
Show what can happen when medicine, technology and collaboration must adapt to conditions for which there is no perfect plan: a biopsy performed with the help of a welder, diagnostic images obtained with improvised tools, specialists connected by another continent and drugs parachuted in the antarctic darkness.
For months, in one of the most remote points of the Earth, a small community did everything that could to allow its physician to continue to live.