Australia's Wood fuels the spirit of optimism
Australia's Wood fuels the spirit of optimism
Trevor Robb, Agence France-Presse/Perth, Australia
When bombs ripped through Kuta in the Indonesian resort island of Bali almost three years ago, 202 people were killed. For many of those who survived, the nightmare had just begun. Australian of the Year Fiona Wood, one of the world's leading burns specialists, worked around the clock for days on end with a specialist team at Royal Perth Hospital to treat victims suffering unimaginable pain.
It's a pretty good quip and it takes a moment for the penny to drop.
The answer is Joan of Arc, the young French woman burned at the stake in Medieval times for alleged heresy.
The question to one of the worlds leading burns specialists, British-born clinical professor Fiona Wood: "Which person from any time in history would you most like to have dinner with?"
Wood, 47, mother of six, plastic surgeon, medical researcher and current Australian of the Year, practically crackles as a positive life force.
Even the terrible suffering of the 28 badly-burned souls flown to Wood and her team for treatment in the wake of the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings has not jaundiced her view of the world.
Asked whether she hates the bombers, she replies without a moment's hesitation: "No. I cant have any influence over why those things happen or the people who make them happen.
"I cant change it. Why would I waste my energy on it when I can put it into things I can control?"
In her control in the days and weeks following the Bali bombings was the care and rehabilitation of the badly injured patients transferred to Royal Perth, Western Australia's busiest trauma hospital.
The early days were frantic as she coordinated a 60-strong medical team. At one stage they worked around-the-clock for five straight days treating patients suffering from burns on up to 92 percent of their bodies.
In her pale green hospital gown, with a cap on her head that left her earrings uncovered, she worked on patients who had sometimes been left resembling little more than a slab of meat.
Despite her upbeat approach, she admits the pressure was sometimes too much.
"There were times like I'd walk away from the operating theater and shed a tear," she says.
Five years earlier Wood had the foresight to develop a large- scale disaster plan to deal with such an incident.
'Spray-on' skin
But it was her groundbreaking research and development of a new burns treatment that was put to the ultimate test by the Bali attacks carried out by Indonesian Islamic extremists.
Wood and her scientific research partner, Marie Stoner, had spent years developing spray-on skin, a technique that allows surgeons to take cells from the healthy skin on a burns patient and spray them onto the damaged area.
She and Stoner established the biotech company Clinical Cell Culture (C3), which grows skin cell cultures for doctors from all over the world. The money raised goes back into research.
The spray-on procedure is designed to allow skin cells to regenerate far more quickly than if they were grown in sheets in a traditional laboratory culture, reducing subsequent scarring, infections and the need for surgery.
It's a controversial technique, according to the respected scientific journal, Nature.
The journal quoted Peter Haertsch, head of burns and reconstructive surgery at Concord Hospital in Sydney, as saying spray-on skin is a brilliant idea but there is not enough evidence that it works. Other burns specialists interviewed by Nature agreed that randomized clinical trials are needed. There is also some doubt over whether the spray-on cells fall off over time, it said.
But Wood has faith, and her ultimate aim is to treat serious burns so there is no scarring -- the Holy Grail for burns specialists -- and ensuring, as she puts it, that a patients subsequent quality of life is worth the pain of survival.
Although Wood believes such a breakthrough will happen, she is not confident it will be within her working lifetime. Wood says she and her team were, however, able to reduce considerably the suffering of many of the Bali victims.
Three of her 28 patients could not be saved and some other victims of that nightmare are still being treated.
'She's just such a huge personality'
Tracey Ball was one whose life was changed by Bali. Two days after the attacks she arrived at Royal Perth with burns to 30 per cent of her body, including her back and arms.
Ball recalls that Wood's effect was instantaneous.
"I didn't realize she was the head doctor. She was so lovely and so down-to-earth. Her bedside manner was amazing," says Ball, now 34.
"You always knew when Fiona was on the floor. You could feel her before she even entered a room because there was such a buzz," she says.
"The whole dynamic of the place would change when she came in. She had this laugh, this humor and she's just such a huge personality. I always looked forward to seeing her."
Ball was horrified by the scars she saw, but Wood stepped in to reassure her.
"I learn something from every patient I treat," she says in an interview at her biotech company. "Burns are devastating for the person who suffers them and they are a life-changing experience."
From humble beginnings in the Yorkshire coal mining village of Ackworth, Wood has become one of the worlds foremost authorities on skin regeneration in burn victims.
At the age of 12 Wood, though not a Quaker, attended the Ackworth Quaker School, an experience that helped mold her gentle philosophy on life.
Later she headed to London to become a doctor and surgeon via St Thomas's Hospital Medical School.
In England she met and married Western Australian surgeon Tony Keirath. The couple had two children and then headed to Perth in 1987.
Wood fell in love with the country and the outdoor lifestyle, becoming an Australian citizen, director of Royal Perth Hospitals Burns Unit and mother of four more kids.
The precious moments she grabs for herself are usually spent riding her bicycle or on the beach with her family, although they try to avoid holidaying in Perth because of the likelihood that either she or her husband will be called in to work.
'Proud to be an Australian'
Most of her own family remain in Yorkshire, but Wood calls Australia home and intends to keep it that way.
She sees the irony in being named Australian of the Year -- one of the country's most prestigious awards, announced each year by the prime minister to recognize outstanding achievement and an individual's role in inspiring fellow Australians. The award has resulted in a fair bit of good-natured banter back in Yorkshire.
"There was a bit of ribbing going on and they had a great party," says Wood. "They certainly saw the funny side of it but they're also immensely proud."
But she too was proud of being honored by the country she has grown to love.
"I am proud to be an Australian and will work towards a society dependent on the integrity of each and every one of us -- because every drop in the ocean does make a difference," she said on receiving it.
Asked whom she supports in the Ashes cricket series between Australia and England, the native of cricket-loving Yorkshire laughs: "Well, I cant lose."
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AFPLifestyle-Australia-medicine AFP
GetAFP 2.10 -- AUG 31, 2005 10:31:21