With life at stake, polar rescue plan redrawn

For the second time in two years, the doctor at a research station in Antarctica is sick. But this time, getting him out is more difficult.

©Associated Press

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 15, 2001

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- American officials Saturday radically redrew plans to rescue a sick doctor from the South Pole, calling small aircraft from Canada to land on a runway carved out of ice.

Dr. Ronald S. Shemenski, 59, the only physician at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, recently passed a gallstone and has the potentially life-threatening condition known as pancreatitis.

"I think that the proper medical treatment is to medevac him to a place where he can get the standard of care," which is surgery to remove his gallbladder, said Gerald Katz, an internist in Englewood, Colo., who is helping to manage the case. "I think that whether a plane with a flight crew can land has to be an independent decision."

Shemenski "has expressed the willingness to stay and suffer whatever consequences might occur," Katz added. "That's been his position all along."

A fleet of three ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules cargo planes that had been heading from a New York air base to New Zealand to carry out the dangerous mission were recalled after the decision to use smaller planes, the Washington, D.C.-based National Science Foundation said.

Instead, two eight-seat, twin-engine planes called Twin Otters will fly from Canada to the southernmost tip of South America before flying to a British Antarctic base and waiting for weather to ease enough to allow one of them to make a mercy dash to the pole. An attempt to get to the base is not expected to happen before Wednesday.

"Air Force, Department of Interior, and NSF officials . . . concluded that the Twin Otter airframe offered the best chance of getting to and from the Pole in the near-dark with temperatures around (-103 F)," the NSF said.

Temperatures at the pole are about -80 F.

When conditions allow, one of the planes will fly for 10 hours from Britain's Rothera research station to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station carrying two pilots, an engineer, a replacement physician and a nurse. The other Twin Otter and its crew will remain at Rothera as backup resources.

This is the second time in recent years that the South Pole station's lone physician has developed a serious illness. In October 1999, Dr. Jerri Nielsen was successfully evacuated after she discovered a breast tumor that was diagnosed as cancerous.

Col. Richard Saburro, one of the men who was helping coordinate the current mission, said efforts to evacuate Shemenski would be more difficult.

"In the Nielsen situation, we were heading . . . into summer with temperatures trending upward . . . and light conditions improving. We had daylight," Saburro said.

"Things are just reversed today. We know we are heading into winter. The sun has already set. There isn't much light at the South Pole. So that adds considerable additional challenges and risks that we need to account for."

The NSF said the Twin Otters were chosen over the Hercules because they can better deal with the icy conditions.

"The extreme temperatures at the pole are less likely to affect the Twin Otter landing gear, which is less reliant on hydraulic fluids than are the Hercules," the NSF said.

In extreme cold, hydraulic fluid becomes viscous, making controls sluggish. The four-engine turboprop LC-130 Hercules is rated safe down to -67 F while the Twin Otter is rated safe to -103 F.

The Amundsen-Scott base is a scattering of low buildings half-buried in the drifting snow. The largest looks like a partially buried golf ball lodged in the polar ice.

About 50 U.S. scientists work at the base during the polar winter carrying out experiments involving astrophysics and astronomy, with a range of sophisticated telescopes. Similar research stations are scattered across Antarctica staffed by researchers from nations including Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Although the National Science Foundation, which coordinates U.S. scientific research in Antarctica, says Shemenski's condition is improving, authorities want to evacuate him in case he deteriorates in coming weeks when temperatures will plunge too far for an evacuation and stay that way until October.

Shemenski signed on last fall with Raytheon Polar Services Co., a company that provides logistics support to the U.S. science facilities. A family practitioner, he gave up his private practice in Ohio for a life of short-term medical assignments in remote places.

"He was looking forward" to spending the winter at the South Pole, said his cousin Richard Shemenski of Powell, Ohio. "He just thought it would be an adventure."

Ronald Shemenski works with a physician's assistant to care for the medical needs of about 50 people at the South Pole station. He arrived there Oct. 29.

Katz said Shemenski developed severe abdominal pain around April 1 and noticed his urine was dark, a common occurrence when a gallstone blocks the duct that drains bile from the gallbladder. He had blood tests and was treated with painkillers and intravenous antibiotics and fluid.

Katz said that an ultrasound test showed at least one gallstone and that blood tests indicated Shemenski's pancreas had become inflamed, a complication that sometimes occurs when a gallstone blocks a duct. Inflammation of the pancreas, an organ that makes digestive enzymes, causes severe pain and fever and sometimes progresses to peritonitis, a life-threatening infection.

Over the ensuing days, the obstructing gallstone apparently passed through the duct and the pain abated. Doctors' concern is that if the duct becomes obstructed again, Shemenski could become much sicker.

- Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.

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