Ill Doctor Heads to Last Stopover on Way to U.S.

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile â€”  An ailing American doctor plucked from the South Pole in a daring rescue flew Friday to Chile’s capital for his last stopover before returning home to the United States.

Dr. Ronald S. Shemenski boarded a commercial flight in Punta Arenas, Chile’s southernmost city, for the 1,300-mile trip to Santiago. The 59-year-old doctor planned to depart Chile today and was expected to arrive in Denver early Sunday morning.

Shemenski spent Friday morning giving interviews in bucolic Punta Arenas, voicing mixed feelings about leaving the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where he was halfway into a one-year stint as the lone physician.

But Shemenski, stricken with a potentially life-threatening gallbladder ailment, acknowledged the dangers of staying behind.

“The main thing was the risk of this happening again,� he said after arriving in Punta Arenas on Thursday. “If it had happened again, maybe it won’t pass and it could be very serious.�

To rescue him, the crew defied the dark polar winter and subzero temperatures to make the first successful landing at the South Pole in the deep of the Antarctic winter. Flights to the South Pole station are extremely hazardous from frigid late February until November.

The pilots of the eight-seat Twin Otter said the flight went smoothly, although they constantly checked four different forecasts because of concern about scattered snow and fog.

Pushed along on a brisk tail wind, they arrived an hour ahead of schedule Thursday, despite temperatures of minus 68.

Dr. Karl Erb, director of the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation in Washington, praised the air crew and all those who pulled off the successful rescue.

“We in the U.S. Antarctic Program are extremely gratified,� Erb said in a statement.

Shemenski was to be evaluated at a hospital in Denver. Doctors will make a decision on when to operate on Shemenski, who suffers from pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas that occurs when a gallstone passes through the bile duct.

Shemenski’s was the second dramatic rescue in a week. On Tuesday, a plane evacuated 11 American staffers from McMurdo station on the Antarctic coast across from New Zealand.