One Day with the Australian of the Year
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
WW | profile THANK GOD FOR FIONA ONE DAY WITH THE AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR 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 Perth 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 1960S, 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.