The doctor who diagnosed and treated her own cancer while trapped on the South Pole has succumbed to the disease ten years later at the age of 57, it has been announced.

Ms FitzGerald performed a biopsy on herself and began treatment of the disease with anti-cancer drugs airdropped into the arctic tundra.

She was only able to communicate with doctors in the US via satellite e-mail during the ordeal.

Mrs FitzGerald returned to the US for a multiple operations, including a mastectomy. Her cancer remained in remission until August 2005. Since then, the disease metastasised to her brain, and her death today was the end of a long struggle.

“I would rather not have it. But the cancer is part of me. It’s given my life colour and texture. Everyone has to get something. Some people are ugly, some people are stupid. I get cancer,” she said.

“More and more as I am here and see what life really is, I understand that it is not when or how you die but how and if you truly were ever alive.”