Nurse practitioner Paula Kelleher gets to deliver a lot of good news about breast cancer at the Breast Care Center at Kaiser in Santa Rosa, Ca. In fact she gives out more good news than bad, which is surprising since the patients she sees dread the worst. Their worry level, she says, ranges from “some anxiety all the way to literally terrified and making out their will.”

In spite of advances in diagnosis and treatment of the disease, more political advocacy for research and a huge boost in public awareness about breast cancer Kelleher sees “a greater level of anxiety in women.” Ironically she thinks much of that fear stems from all that awareness.

Public attention on breast cancer has moved politicians to make the disease a funding priority. It has motivated women to do self exams and get mammograms. Breast cancer continually gets media play. The flip side, said Kelleher, is that women think, “Oh my God, I’m going to get it too.”

Happily she gets to report to the vast majority of patients that they do not have breast cancer. And that’s a lot of relieved women, considering that Kelleher sees an average 12 women a day at Kaiser who come in worried about a lump, a breast pain, a family history of cancer, a questionable mammogram, a request by their physician for further evaluation and just plain fear that they’ve got it.

“Love your breasts. Don’t fear them.”

Kelleher has worked in women’s health her whole career. She remembers when breast cancer was a secret diagnosis, before pink ribbons everywhere and survivors running marathons. Breast cancer is still the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, says Kelleher, and she believes “every woman with a concern needs to be evaluated. But she says, “I just wish they didn’t have to be so afraid.”

Kelleher quotes Dr. Susan Love, the famous author, surgeon and breast cancer activist, who says that women think of their breasts as the loaded guns on their chest. To counter that, Kelleher tells patients, “Love your breasts. Don’t fear them. They’re probably okay. And even if they get diseased we’ll deal with it.”

Kelleher is not being Pollyanna about what she knows is “a very real and devastating disease.” But she adds, “Sometimes it’s spun like it’s inevitable.” Middle aged women, especially, assume that breast cancer is coming to get them and Kelleher thinks that’s because Baby Boomers are now in the age group, from 50 and on up, that is a risk factor for breast cancer.

“There’s more of us,” said Kelleher, age 55. “We see the neighbor, a relative, a friend getting breast cancer and that probably’s because so many of us are in that age group.”
Yet, even women of that age group can relax a little, she says. If there are no other risk factors women in their 50s have a 98 percent chance of getting to their 60s without breast cancer.
Kelleher tells patients they can go to Vegas with those odds.

Her optimism doesn’t just come from being a professional. Kelleher herself had breast cancer. So did her mother, great aunt and a sister. “And we’re all alive,” says Kelleher. Kelleher was as shocked as any other woman who gets the diagnosis. Then she sat down with her surgeon and decided that her best plan was a lumpectomy and radiation.
That was 17 years ago and there’s been no recurrence of cancer.

She tells her story to those women she has to give the bad news – that their biopsy is positive. And then she says, “Let’s get this treated so you can go back to enjoying life.”

When someone on the radio mentioned Dr. Jerri Nielsen, I smiled and thought, “What’s she up to now?”

I didn’t expect her to die. Not our indomitable doctor hero of the South Pole, whose saga in 1999 from diagnosing her own breast cancer to being airlifted in a whiteout and 60 degrees below zero was more riveting than any of today’s crop of reality shows.

You might not have remembered Jerri’s name but you’d never forget that story.
Doctor at Antarctic research station finds lump and does her own biopsy, drafting her polar colleagues to be her surgical team. An ironworker held the syringe. A machinist helped with her IV, a welder assisted with her chemotherapy and medical advice came via email and teleconference from a surgeon in Indiana.

I met Jerri Nielsen in Santa Rosa when she spoke at a breast cancer seminar. By then she had written her book “Ice Bound” and was looking forward to being played by Susan Sarandon in the movie version. She’d been traveling the country raising awareness and money for breast cancer programs and talked about the amazing club of women she met. Women with breast cancer who did not suffer in silence. Not a victim among them. She called them Kick-Butt women.

I asked Jerri back then what people found most interesting about her story.
“It’s probably because I’m just like anybody, a middle-aged, overweight lady going on an adventure,” she said. Although not everyone’s idea of adventure would be to work in what Jerri called “the highest, driest, coldest, windiest and emptiest place on earth.”

Not a victim among them

Yet, Jerri Nielsen made deciding to leave her hospital job in Ohio to live on the ice sound like a fun idea. She took to it, learning to love the raw beauty of the place and becoming part of a caring, sweet eccentric community of scientists and crew.

I think about her now. Had someone told her she was going to get cancer at age 47 she might have never left Ohio. The cancer would still have come but Jerri would have missed her big adventure. And we would have missed her.

During her stateside tour she said she wanted to return to Antarctica and show it off to her mother. According to the obituaries she did return several times to her highest, coldest place on earth. She continued practicing medicine and speaking. She married a a fellow adventurer, a man she’d met while traveling in the jungle and had become Jerri Nielsen Fitzgerald. The cancer, which had gone into remission, roared back four years ago. She died at a too-young 57.

News of Jerri’s death was quickly upstaged by celebrity obits in that same week. If famous deaths come in threes, hers was knocked down the list by Johnny Carson’s sidekick, an actress in a red bathing suit and the King of Pop.

They were gifted artists and entertainers. Jerri was a person who might never had become known had her extraordinary situation not turned her into an ambassador of courage and chutzpah. She reminded us to get those mammograms, do self exams and push for better detection. Jerri often made the point that six months before she discovered her lump she’d had a clear mammogram.

She was an everyday woman who spoke to people like my young friend in her late 20s who’s getting a double mastectomy she hopes will prevent the disease that killed her relatives. And to my old friend who developed cancer in both breasts in her 60s and is alive and healthy in her 90s.

Definitely kick-butt women.