The adventure truly starts in April 2016 when I receive the email telling me that, if I accept the job, ESA has chosen me as the next research doctor for the 2016-2017 winter-over campaign at Concordia, the French-Italian station in Antarctica. I applied back in January, and travelled to Paris for a surprise interview in February; I was asked to attend for a battery of medical and psychological tests, but did not expect to find myself in a room with 6 people inquiring about my motivations!
Until that email, the possibility of going to Antarctica still seemed extremely remote and surreal, and I had various other alternatives in mind. I had seen the job offer the previous year, had hesitated to apply but kept thinking about it.
What finally decided me was a conference on Extreme Medicine I attended in London in November 2016. I listened with delight to Sir Ranulph Fiennes telling of his adventures, and my dreams of travels to the end of the world hooked me back. We also had the chance of having a skype conference with a few of the members of the team living at Concordia, near the end of their winter-over. The experience was out-of-this-world; I felt like they were in a spaceship on another planet! With all this in mind, it was just impossible to resist the offer… I had to accept the job!
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Concordia/Are_you_a_doctor_with_the_right_stuff
75 Degrees South 