The ACC Senior Cardiovascular Professionals Section page is intended to provide members with an opportunity to share our life experiences, as well as form a community that inspires and supports one another as we enter a new phase in our professional and personal lives. Thanks to our shared profession, the ACC, other organizations and interests outside medicine, I have had fantastic opportunities to meet and form lasting friendships in many different venues in the U.S. and around the world. To kick off this new page, I will share love my love of travel, meeting new people and seeing new things, with a brief account of my recent "bucket list" trip to Antarctica.

One evening sitting around the fire after a day of skiing in Taos, I listened to a ski instructor talk about his adventure retracing Ernest Shackleton's 26-mile trek across the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia Island to reach a whaling station, seeking rescue for his exploration party which was marooned in Antarctica. Shackleton arrived on the uninhabited side of the island in a 20-foot-long lifeboat after his ship sank, locked in an ice flow. I finally got my chance to visit this whaling station and Antarctica itself in November 2018.

To visit my "last" continent, we flew first to Santiago, Chile, and then to the Falkland Islands – an amazing place and unexpected treat in its own right. There, we boarded our ship bound for South Georgia Island and then onto the Antarctic archipelago. For the next three weeks, we visited hundreds and thousands of penguins, albatrosses and many other bird species, as well as thousands of seals of various types and the odd whale. Although I was a zoology major in college, I only memorized the names of species for tests, not for fun. We got off the ship (I learned that only inexperienced landlubbers called it a "boat") on zodiac rafts nearly every day – accompanied by professional naturalists and photographers – to hike, snowshoe, cross-country ski or kayak. After dinner on the ship, evenings were spent listening to fascinating conversations and talks given by our on-board naturalists, historians and photographers, including Peter Hillary, who recounted his experiences climbing Mt. Everest and other peaks.

Yes, it was cold in Antarctica, but no worse than January in Milwaukee. Unlike Milwaukee, it was light outside almost 24 hours a day since it was summer in Antarctica, below the 60th parallel. While I do not usually get seasick, the trip back to Ushuaia, at the tip of Argentina, across the Drake Passage, involved some 30-foot seas, making one feel a bit like traveling inside a popcorn popper. Donald Trump arrived in Buenos Aires for the World Economic Forum the day we departed for home. It was a good November.

Please share with us your recent life experiences – work related or not – volunteer activities, hobbies, travel, or virtually any challenging or rewarding situations. We are all on this ship together. Photos are optional, passion is always welcome. Your professional and personal experiences, comments, questions, observations, suggestions and opinions are all fodder for the ACC Senior Cardiovascular Professionals Section page. Bring them on.

Photo Gallery

❮ ❯

This article was authored by L. Samuel Wann, MD, MACC, cardiologist at the Columbia St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, WI.