| By ROBERT WELLER Associated
Press Writer
DENVER (AP)--A
physician airlifted from the South Pole in an unprecedented winter
rescue for treatment of a potentially life-threatening gall bladder
ailment arrived happy and upbeat on Sunday.
``I want a
shower and a shave,'' Dr. Ronald S. Shemenski said, shrugging
and smiling after arriving at Denver International Airport. ``You
keep seeing the same shirt on TV.''
Shemenski,
who passed a gallstone while still at the bottom of the Earth,
had traveled from the 24-hour darkness of the Antarctic winter
to a sunny Rocky Mountain spring after his rescue from the Amundsen-Scott
South Pole Station by the daring crew of a twin-engine plane.
Shemenski,
59, of Oak Harbor, Ohio, had spent most of Saturday resting at
Punta Arenas, Chile, before the long flight to Denver via Santiago
and Miami.
He had been
nearly halfway into a one-year stint as the lone physician among
50 researchers at the station when he was stricken by pancreatitis,
an inflammation of the pancreas that occurs when a gallstone passes
through the bile duct.
He came to
Denver to be evaluated at Swedish Hospital in suburban Englewood,
after being in contact with the hospital staff from the South
Pole.
On Friday,
in an interview in Punta Arenas, Shemenski told The Associated
Press that he had mixed feelings about leaving his colleagues
behind.
``If I had
my druthers, I'd be at the Pole. But the window of opportunity
to get me out was now. I couldn't sit around and wait,'' he said.
The 59-year-old
doctor said he feared a recurrence of the inflammation.
The rescue
crew had to make the first winter landing at the South Pole. Flying
to the polar station between February and November is extremely
dangerous both because of the darkness and wind chills that can
fall below 100 degrees below zero.
However, the
flight turned out to be a milk run for the crew of the ski-equipped
Twin Otter aircraft, even though they had to land on a snow strip
lit only by burning trash cans.
During the
flight from the South Pole, Shemenski rested on a makeshift bed
atop two 55-gallon fuel drums. A tail wind pushed them to Punta
Arenas an hour ahead of schedule.
Dr. Karl Erb,
director of the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science
Foundation in Washington, praised the air crew and everyone else
who pulled off the rescue.
``We in the
U.S. Antarctic Program are extremely gratified,'' Erb said in
a statement.
Shemenski's
was the second dramatic rescue in a week. On Tuesday, 11 American
staffers were flown out of McMurdo Base on the Antarctic coast
across from New Zealand.
|
