Nielsen teleconferenced with medical personnel in the United States and had to operate on herself in order to extract tissue samples for analysis.

Her ordeal attracted a great amount of attention from the media, and Nielsen later wrote an autobiographical book recounting her story.

In 1998, Nielsen was hired for a one-year contract to serve as the medical doctor at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on Antarctica.

[citation needed] The National Science Foundation decided to send a military plane to airdrop supplies and medication for her treatment.

The plane did not attempt a landing because its skis would risk sticking to the ice and its fuel and hydraulic lines would rapidly freeze, dooming the craft.

An Air Force C-141 cargo plane, staged out of Christchurch, overflew the Pole in the darkness and sent six bundles of supplies and medical equipment parachuting toward the station on July 11.

[citation needed] The book was later adapted into Ice Bound: A Woman's Survival at the South Pole, a 2003 CBS-TV movie starring Susan Sarandon,[10] and in 2008 became the inspiration for an episode of Fox Network show House, "Frozen", in which the team must somehow, via teleconference, diagnose and treat a stricken psychiatrist at the South Pole.

[citation needed] Nielsen's case shares some similarities with that of Dr. Leonid Rogozov, who had to remove his own appendix while spending the winter at Novolazarevskaya research station in 1961.