Trouble at South Pole: 'Get me out of here' urges manager who suffered a stroke
A manager at a South Pole research station is campaigning for her own evacuation, accusing 'big business and big government'" of stranding her in Antarctica after she suffered a stroke.
Trouble at South Pole: 'Get me out of here' urges manager who suffered a stroke

By Jacqui Goddard, Miami

Renee-Nicole Douceur, 58, has been battling to be airlifted from the Amundsen-Scott Research Station since a stroke on August 27 left her with partially impaired eyesight and jumbled speech, and prompted a declaration from the resident doctor that the patient should be extracted immediately.

The National Science Foundation, the US government agency that oversees the remote, icy station through a contract with Raytheon Polar Services, which manages its day to day running, said that mounting a rescue flight in current weather conditions - when extreme sub-zero temperatures can turn aviation fuel to slush - would pose "significant risk to the lives of the patient and all of the personnel involved".

Warmer conditions should allow an evacuation later this month, they have said, though if the weather fails to clear that could get pushed back as far as November. They have termed Ms Douceur's case a "non-emergency".

Ms Douceur, a retired nuclear scientist from New Hampshire, complains that she should have been rescued sooner and points to the evacuation in August 2001 of Ron Shemanski, a South Pole scientist who suffered life-threatening pancreatitis, as proof that urgent flights can be made outside the usual February to October aviation shutdown. Temperatures plunge as low as minus 70F during that period and must rise to minus 50F before a flight can operate safely.

The case also has similarities to that of South Pole worker Dr Jerri Nielsen Fitzgerald, who had to treat her own breast cancer in 1999 while stranded at the base by weather. She was airlifted out on October 16 that year, the earliest a flight has ever operated. She died following a relapse a decade later.

Ms Douceur's niece, Sydney Raines, is managing a campaign website and a Facebook page that condemns the the NSF for "acting in an appalling manner" and putting budgets before medical concerns.

"Money should not be considered more valuable than the life of an employee," the website complains.

"They have declared her stroke, a severe medical condition, not an emergency even though the lack of treatment endangers her vision, her mental capacity and her very life."

The scientist's family have hired a lawyer to press her case. Ms Douceur, who is undergoing daily oxygen therapy, told the New York Times: "They're saying the risk is too high.It feels like they're just stonewalling."

She stated on her website: "It is conceivable if the weather is bad it could be late October or early November before I get out of here. Hope not."