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THANK GOD FOR FIONA ONE DAY WITH THE

FIONA WOOD is an unlikely media waited 21 days, before Fiona Wood star. For one, she is a plastic surgeon and revolutionised the process and brought it medical researcher, an occupation not down to 10 days, then five – now suddenly usually high on the celebrity charts. their microscopic skin cells could be For another, she cherishes her family’s cooked in an enzyme solution for half an privacy and hates, simply hates, posing hour in the operating theatre and sprayed for photos, especially if there’s hair and on. It meant, literally, the difference make-up involved. “I don’t do make-up,” between life and death. It also meant she says with breathless incredulity. that the research Fiona had been quietly She was the saviour “Ever. It’s like ‘Are you kidding?’ ” working on in an anonymous laboratory And thirdly, she’s almost too clever for a decade, with scientist Marie Stoner, of so many Bali burns for her own good. Often when she speaks, was now the focus of national attention. victims in 2002 and it’s like listening to a multi-track stereo It transformed her life completely. or watching a group of athletes break the She was now a revered public figure, the co-inventor of a starter’s gun – too many thoughts trying soon to be named West Australian of the to sprint from the brain to the roof of the Year two years running (2004 and 2005) revolutionary spray-on mouth at the one time. and then, in January this year, Australian skin, but outgoing The result is Fiona Wood sometimes of the Year. gives you – in between sparks of home- In her quest to improve the treatment Australian of the Year spun wisdom, deep intelligence and of burns injuries, Fiona had long planned girlish laughter – sentences half-formed for a disaster where speed in dealing with Dr Fiona Wood won’t or murdered completely. There’s just not victims would be of the essence. A major stop there. David Leser enough time, it would seem, to form them fire, perhaps, or an industrial accident on properly. Too many other things to do – the North West Gas Shelf, but nothing on talks to this inspiring like save people’s lives, a fact which the scale of Bali – not so many people so plastic surgeon and millions of Australians discovered in quickly and with such appalling injuries. those cruel, agonising days and weeks The first wave of Bali victims arrived mother of six. following the first Bali bombing three years at the Royal Hospital within ago. It was then that this Yorkshire-born 26 hours of the bombings. By Tuesday, plastic surgeon and mother of six emerged October 15, 2002, most of the others were Surgeon Fiona Wood, reluctantly into the spotlight, because of there as well – 28 coming via Darwin, 47, has boundless fher pioneering research into a spray-on then three from the east coast. (Normally, energy and intellect. skin technique known as Cellspray. the hospital would average 10 major burns Before this photo was taken around 9am, Instead of patients having to wait up to patients per year.) she had already done five days for their skin to be successfully All elective surgery had to be stopped, her paperwork and

grown in a laboratory – they’d previously new theatres opened up, blood and  CROCKER. AND MAKE-UP BY KATIE HAIR MISCHKULNIG. BY MARTIN PHOTOGRAPHY cycled 40 kilometres.

54 | WW NOVEMBER 2005 WW NOVEMBER 2005 | 55 “I SAW A VERY BADLY SCARRED CHILD. AND I THOUGHT, ‘YOU’VE GOT TO BE ABLE TO DO SOMETHING MORE ABOUT THIS’.”

surgical reconstruction products urgently Once in Perth, he’d been placed in an sought, and a team of 150 surgeons, induced coma for 44 days and on at least anaesthetists, physiotherapists, plus two occasions given electric shock to psychiatrists, nurses, dieticians, pain restart his heart. During that time, Fiona specialists and infection-control experts Wood performed three operations on him, brought in, indeed, a whole surgical plan including one in which she reconstructed drawn up to meet the crisis. For five days his entire back. When he woke he had and nights, Fiona and her team worked no idea where he was, nor how he’d got tirelessly to cope with terrorism’s bloody there, only that he might have just seen harvest – massive burns, shrapnel wounds, his “guardian angel”. blast injuries, dehydration, shock and the “Fiona came into the burns unit around onset of blood-borne infections. December 6,” Anthony tells The Weekly “The most amazing thing about now, “50 days after I’d gone into ICU, her,” says Dale Edgar, vice-president and just asked how I was going. I said I of the Australian New Zealand Burns was feeling not bad and then she walked Association and Royal Perth Hospital’s out. I said, ‘What’s your name?’ and she (RPH) senior physiotherapist, “is her smiled and said, ‘Fiona’. boundless level of energy, which you “She came and went like the wind.” can tap into and feed off, and hopefully try and run along with for a while. DURING THE LATE , in the “Eventually, you fall behind and you grim, coal-mining town of Frickley in have to gather your strength and try and Yorkshire, they used to call Fiona Wood catch up with her again ... She has a multi- the Frickley Flyer, owing to the fact she track mind and can compartmentalise was so fast on her feet. things. We often talk here about juggling She used to run for the local collieries and keeping balls in the air. Balls are nicer and recalls before one particular race than chainsaws and daggers.” sitting on her father’s shoulders, listening In the aftermath of the Bali terror to firebrand union leader Arthur Scargill attacks, it was all chainsaws and daggers. exhorting his striking miners to “set no Three patients died in the days and weeks limits” in their struggle against the that followed the Kuta attacks, one of Macmillan government. Those words Known as the Frickley Flyer in her them Simone Hanley, 28, who battled made a lasting impression on her, as did hometown in Yorkshire, Fiona was for 56 excruciating days in ICU before the fate of the miners years later, when brought up by parents who believed in the power of sport and education succumbing to her injuries. (Simone’s they lost their jobs. “I remember being to transform a person’s life. extraordinarily full lives despite their Margaret Hospital for children; clinical world go around, the world of her children sister, Renae Anderson, was killed while profoundly affected,” she says. “I’d never deformities. One of them had no feet, half professor with the School of Paediatrics and the world of the burns service in standing outside the Sari Club.) seen people begging in the streets of a hand and no fingers on his other hand. and Child Health at the University of Western Australia. “That was the lowest point I saw Fiona Yorkshire before.” learning difficulties. She, too, could run His friends called him Fingers. Western Australia; co-founder of C3 or “A couple of years ago, though, [when go through,” says Dale. “She would have Fiona’s father, Geoff Wood, a miner like the wind. In 1985, Fiona Wood met and married Clinical Cell Culture, a private company she also had a private practice] it was too tears in her eyes whenever she talked himself, was often called upon to perform Fiona, herself, was so bright her own Western Australian-born surgeon Tony recognised throughout the world for much. You could never catch her and I about Simone. The worry on her face dangerous rescue missions. A man of teachers thought she might be stupid, mad Keirath and, in 1987, they moved to Perth its research and breakthroughs in the was sick of talking to her from behind. was obvious in the weeks before Simone high intellect, he hated his work and was or both. Eventually, she skipped a year with their two small children, Tom and treatment of burns; director of the And when you did talk to her, you needed passed on. Fiona honestly thought she determined that none of his four children and became head girl and dux of the Jess. “It’s non-negotiable,” Tony had McComb Research Foundation … and a tape recorder because it would all come would have to do four limb amputations would ever suffer the same grinding school. Brilliant at maths and science, reportedly told her. “You marry me and all this in addition to being a wife and out whooosh … So many thoughts all to this woman to reduce the bacteria in poverty or lack of opportunities he and she decided to become a surgeon and you live in Perth.” mother of six children between the ages coming out at once. Now she’s catchable.” her body. That was what was on the cards his wife, Elsie, had known. gained admission to St Thomas’s Hospital Over the next few years, as Fiona of 10 and 18 ... and in addition to being Yet only just. and that was how far she was willing to Both of them believed in the power Medical School in London. Early on in completed her plastic surgery training, Australian of the Year, which has required We meet on the 11th floor of the Royal go to save someone.” of sport and education to transform a her medical career, she became fascinated she had four more children. “If you her to crisscross the country all year for Perth Hospital, in the newly-built Telstra Anthony Svilicich was luckier, person’s life. Elsie, a physical education by burns. “I saw a very badly scarred can fill the unforgiving minute with speaking engagements ... and in addition Burns Reconstruction and Rehabilitation although for a few perilous weeks there it teacher, had transferred to a Quaker child,” she says of a four-year-old girl 60 seconds’ worth of distance run … ” to building a new house in a seaside Unit, which Prince Charles visited earlier didn’t appear he would be. He arrived on school so her children could get a scalded by a hot cup of coffee. “And I her father had told her repeatedly, quoting suburb of Perth … this year. Sporting a pink Lisa Ho outfit, the second plane out of Bali, with burns to better education. thought, ‘You’ve got to be able to do from Rudyard Kipling’s poem If. She “Her normal activities are 300 per cent string of soft satin Broome pearls and a 64 per cent of his body, shrapnel wounds Their eldest son, Geoff, had gone something more about this.’ It is not just took him at his word. more than most people,” says Joy Fong, pair of sunglasses perched on brushed- to both knees, permanent damage to one from being a shopfitter to a lawyer. He a cosmetic thing, it’s functional. The clinical consultant in the burns unit and a back wet hair, she looks more like the ear drum and a range of deadly micro- was also a champion boxer and cyclist. whole package – the itchiness, the pain, I’D BEEN WARNED THAT FIONA colleague of Fiona’s for nearly 20 years. poster girl for middle-age cool – she is 47 organisms that couldn’t be treated with Another son, David, had become an the restriction of movement, the way it Wood was so busy she could make “Now it is 400 per cent. She doesn’t stop. – than Perth’s only female plastic surgeon. antibiotics. He’d been sitting at the bar of orthopaedic surgeon and representative looks and acts.’ ” conventionally busy people look like “But I can’t say enough about her. She What’s more, she even uses terms such as the Sari Club, 15 metres from where the rugby player, as well as a 400-metre She’d also met scarred World War II freeloaders: director of the RPH’s burns is a very, very kind person … she is also “sass”, “airplay”, “no-brainer” and “24/7”. bomb exploded, but managed to walk out runner, while the fourth child, Nicola, fighter pilots, members of the so-called unit; director of the WA burns service; about 20 years ahead of everyone in her “Hi, I’m Fiona Wood,” she says,

through an illuminated hole in the wall. had ended up working with children with Guinea Pig Club, who’d managed to live MISCHKULNIG. BY MARTIN PHOTOGRAPHY consulting plastic surgeon at Princess planning and thinking. She makes our greeting me in her office with a broad 

56 | WW NOVEMBER 2005 WW NOVEMBER 2005 | 57 Mum screaming and yelling out my times, telling me about my techniques and encouraging me.” And if you think Jess is the only one similarly driven or gifted like her mother, consider the rest of “The Incredibles”. Tony, the father, is a surgeon and a keen athlete who, each morning, either swims a few kilometres with his sons or goes for a 90km bike ride. Eldest son Tom, 18, is already in third-year engineering and science at university. He represented the state in the triathlon. Brother Dan, 15, has, in the words of his mother, “an extraordinary intellect” and is currently studying German one night a week at university, in between attending school and kayak Fiona celebrates being named 2005 training. Later this year, as part of a Australian of the Year with her six school program, he will travel to Hanoi children (clockwise from left), Joe, is riding a bike.” This relentless quest for in Vietnam to live with orphans. now 14, Dan, 15, Tom, 18, Jess, 17, self-improvement has obviously rubbed Then there’s Joe, 14, who by all Jack, 12, and Evie, 10, in Canberra. off. At 17, Jess is already in second-year accounts is the most athletic of them medical school and the school’s sports all, having just come fifth in the national smile and a thick northern-England accent. representative. When she was 11, she triathlon championships. Not to be It is 9am and – from Fiona’s point of as selected for the state figure-skating outdone, however, is Jack, 12, who’s view – the day is already four-and-a-half team. She then turned to athletics and into water polo, rugby and swimming, and hours old. Up at 4.30am to do paperwork, represented the state as a middle-distance Evie, 10, who’s into hockey, gymnastics she then went for a 40km bike ride at runner. Two years ago, she went on an and trampolining. Only last night, Evie 6 o’clock, which she finished an hour- exchange program to India to live among bested Jack in a quick quiz. and-a-quarter later. (If truth be known, street kids. She plans to be a surgeon “They were talking about William the that ride was a complete doddle compared like her parents. Conqueror over dinner,” says Fiona, “and to what she did the day before.) Talking to The Weekly at a Perth Evie got the answer before Jack did. They “Yesterday I rode about 140km,” she says, swallowing her words with laughter, “and it was a bit too far really. After about “I DON’T CARE WHETHER YOU half of it, I couldn’t keep up any more, so I just went with the tail enders, cut a WIN OR LOSE. WHAT I CARE ABOUT corner and went home. I was on the bike for about five-and-a-half hours, then I IS THAT YOU DO YOUR BEST.” went to the beach. I went in the surf because I needed to be more buoyant.” cafe, she paints a fulsome word picture were talking about 1066 and who was the Of course. After finishing her bike ride of her mother as a person ferociously guy who actually shot Harold in the eye this morning, Fiona then did a ward round of competitive, but deeply principled and with the arrow? She got it out before Jack the burns unit, completed more paperwork, devoted to her children’s welfare. and Jack was very perturbed because he’s took a shower in the hospital and then arrived “She is doing for us exactly what her the military historian in the family.” for this interview with The Weekly. Soon she parents did for her,” she says. “She always Ask Fiona whether she fosters will leave for the State Library to launch a wants to do the best she can.” competition between her children and campaign for the Australian Childhood When they were infants, Fiona would she replies, “I think the most healthy Foundation, then hold a press conference often take her children in a backpack thing is doing the best for yourself. You with local media, before attending two while doing ward rounds. On weekends, don’t do anybody any favours by being research meetings in the early afternoon. she would put maths tests on the end of less than you are in order to make other After that, she’ll pick up the children their beds, equations that, if answered people comfortable. I don’t care whether from school and, on the way to dropping correctly, would lead the children on you win or lose. What I care about is them off at sports practice, she’ll conduct a treasure hunt through the house. that you do your best.” a three-way medical research conference Outside school hours, she would To the charge that she might appear call with England and Belgium. She’ll be arranging extra-curricular classes and like a super mum to women with half her then pick the kids up, go home and cook sports camps. When she went overseas to workload, Fiona replies, “I’m really lucky dinner, put the younger ones to bed and a medical conference, she invariably took that I’m fit and healthy, and that I’ve got resume her paperwork. one of the children with her. And when the energy to operate on a lot of fronts. “I don’t know how she does it,” says it came to any sporting activity, she was And I feel like it’s a duty almost to do it. daughter Jess. “She just doesn’t sleep. always there urging them on or, better I never expect anyone in my team or At med school she used to go to sleep just still, working out with them. anyone around me to do what I do. after the beginning of the lecture, wake up “We have a vineyard [down south],” “[In fact] there’s a part of me that just before it ended and catch what was says Jess, “and when we’re there, Mum thinks I’m as mad as a cut snake.” there from that. She’s trained herself not would take me into town and train me. Which probably helps explain why,

to need much sleep. Her idea of relaxation I’d be running around the track with a couple of years ago, when the family  FAIRFAX.

58 | WW NOVEMBER 2005 WW NOVEMBER 2005 | 59 harvesting of skin. If it’s thick skin, it takes longer for the enzyme to penetrate. If it’s thin skin, it takes less time. So we were able to take it down [from 21 days] to 10 days pretty quickly because we focused on it. And then by 1994/5, we were down to five days and using the cells as a spray.” Seven years later, with Australia’s first victims of terrorism being airlifted into Perth, Fiona found a way of reducing the time frame to 30 minutes. She did this by taking a small section of skin and cooking Fiona with patients and 2002 Bali bomb it in an enzyme solution, harvesting the survivors, (left to right) Gary Nash, Aaron cells and then spraying it on. Cowdery, Stuart Henderson, Tracey Bell, “Whatever I do,” she says, “I work Melinda Kemp, Peter Hughes and went on holidays to Borneo in Malaysia, Anthony Svilicich in hospital in Perth. hard at it because that’s what I am … Fiona insisted they all climb to the top whether it’s doing the surgery or riding of Mt Kinabalu, South-East Asia’s the bike or trying to help the kids. tallest mountain. point that covering more than 90 per “But I don’t see it as a race to the finish “We stayed the night halfway up,” cent of your body in that manner … line. Someone asked me the other day, Jess recalls, “and climbed the peak [4000 Well, there had to be a quicker way, ‘What’s it like at the top?’ and I thought, metres] at 2am. It was so high that the because the quicker you can get the ‘Where is the top?’ The concept of the top little ones were collapsing. Tom and I new skin on, the better.” is just kind of bizarre, really, because I’ve were really, really fit, but we couldn’t Mark still has weakness in the upper learnt over the years that things change. take more than 20 steps without having limbs and problems with his nerves and You ask one question in research, you to stop for breath. joints, but he has resumed his job as a may answer it, but you ought to ask “Then it got a bit tricky at the top and teacher and works out regularly in the another 12. You never actually get to Jack [who was then 10] was exhausted, gym. What has strengthened him is his this elusive top of the mountain.” and there were a few vomits. Mum was faith in a higher power and his belief in So ask Fiona Wood what she still very encouraging … but Dan [13 at the Fiona Wood’s place in that divine scheme. hasn’t achieved and she replies, “From time] wasn’t too impressed. It was 2am “My wife and I believe that we are an a professional point of view, scarless and we hadn’t eaten properly, and we instrument in God’s hand and that he healing. Scarless healing is really my couldn’t breathe and he said, ‘I’ve had used Fiona to save my life and to save personal Holy Grail.” enough, I don’t want to go’. And Mum many people’s lives.” In the meantime, though, the C3 or replied, ‘There’s no point in coming this Fiona regards Mark as an inspiration Clinical Cell Culture business that Fiona far and not making it’.” and a catalyst for the research grant she and Marie Stoner established more than applied for after his accident. She wanted a decade ago, continues to lead the field EVEN A SMALL BURN can be a life- to grow skin faster and she wanted to and, from its base in Cambridge, England, shattering event. To be burnt as badly as Mark Mulder almost defies comprehension. In 1992, while working as a roofing “WHATEVER I DO, I WORK HARD AT plumber on a building site in Perth, this father of two was set alight after leaking IT ... WHETHER IT’S DOING SURGERY petrol ignited a nearby generator. By the time workmates had tackled him to the ... OR TRYING TO HELP THE KIDS.” ground and doused the flames, most of his skin had already peeled off. There grow it in Perth. “The work out of Boston now exports this life-saving spray-on skin were burns to 90 per cent of his body, in the late ’70s,” she says, “demonstrated technology to Europe, Asia and, soon, the massive damage to the nerves and joints that you could harness the cells’ regenerative US. A percentage of the profits is always and, at one stage, almost complete organ capacity on the surface of the skin – the earmarked for research. shutdown. For three months, he lay in a epidermis – so that you could then use “Fiona could be swanning around coma. For a full year, he was in hospital. it to cover the wounds. That was the making heaps of money doing cosmetic With virtually no skin left to graft, starting point – looking at how we could surgery,” says one of her colleagues, Fiona decided to take a two-centimetre enhance that technology to make skin Dr Bess Fowler, “but she prefers to do patch of skin from his groin – Mark had cells available quicker. burns because she is seriously interested been wearing a nailbag when he ignited – “We were looking at how the cells in assisting people who are suffering. and send it to a laboratory in Melbourne. changed in character and then we started “I have never met anyone so brilliant The skin sample was then cultured and to put them on as fluid, as single cells. We nor someone able to do so much. All I shipped back in flasks to Perth, where then thought, ‘How do we get this on the try to do is keep her in sight as she goes Fiona prepared the skin sheets in sections surface?’ Right, spray it on. So we worked toward the horizon … She told me a story to staple onto the body. out different spray techniques … And once that one of her boys [Joe] was in a “She took that little section,” Mark that’s really the Cellspray story.” triathlon and the wheel came off his bike, tells The Weekly, “and about two weeks By 1993, Fiona and scientist Marie so he ran with his bike to the end … he later she came back and said, ‘I’ve got Stoner had worked out how to save a day didn’t think of stopping.” enough skin to cover you two or three here, a day there. How could he, when he’s got Fiona ■

times over’ … but she realised at that “Simple things,” she says, “like the Wood for a mother? NEWSPIX.COM.

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