Under Her Skin: new biography of Professor Fiona Wood shows private side of a reluctant public figure

“You can’t.”

As Fiona Wood has built her extraordinary life, from daughter of a fifth-generation English coal miner to pioneering plastic surgeon, burns specialist, former Australian of the Year and mother of six, she’s heard that phrase a lot.

You can’t become a surgeon; you’re a woman. You can’t work in plastic surgery; you’re a mother. You can’t save that patient; their burns are too severe. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t.

Luckily for her — and for a lot of others — Wood’s never been inclined to pay it any mind. If anything, “you can’t” has motivated her to prove that, in fact, she absolutely can.

Many West Australians, who have long claimed her as one of our own, think we know Fiona Wood. Trailblazer. World-leading doctor. Relentless optimist. Driven researcher. Energy and enthusiasm personified.

But there have been parts of her story that have remained more private — from facing childhood bullies and eye-watering sexism, how she would return to work within a week or two of giving birth with her baby in her arms, and how deeply hurt she was by criticism from her peers of the spray-on skin she co-invented with medical scientist Marie Stoner.

Now, much to Wood’s trepidation, new light is being shed on her, courtesy of a first (and final) biography, Under Her Skin, tracing how little Fiona Melanie Wood, third child of Geoff and Elsie of West Yorkshire, became Professor Fiona Wood AM, Australian National Living Treasure.

Wood is a reluctant subject, to say the least. She still finds her public profile very uncomfortable, years after she shot into the national psyche for her role in treating victims of the 2002 Bali bombings and as Australian of the Year in 2005.

Bestselling author Sue Williams has been writing to Wood every year for at least a decade, asking to write her biography. Each time, she received a polite demurral with an apology that Wood was simply too busy. The truth was more complicated.

“Of course, she is incredibly busy; she fills her time with all sorts of stuff, constantly,” Williams tells STM. “But the other thing is she’s actually very humble, which is the enemy of the biography. There are some people who revel in telling you all about their life and their achievements but there are some who regard it with absolute horror, and she was, unfortunately, in that category.”

But more than two years ago, with the help of a couple of Wood’s confidantes, Williams managed to convince her to take part. The promise that got her over the line was that Wood’s share of the proceeds would go directly into the Fiona Wood Foundation, where she is still passionately leading research to improve treatment of burns.

“This is something for those around me,” Wood tells STM. “This book is about sustainability, because the foundation has kept us going in the lean years . . . and has been fundamental in keeping our research moving forward and being translated into clinical care.”

Williams spoke to dozens of sources — Wood’s parents, siblings, children, patients, colleagues and even detractors — for this finely drawn, deeply researched account of her life and career.

Wood, for her part, would like to be known simply as someone who combined a willingness to work with an insatiable curiosity to see what’s over the horizon.

“Our time, and our energy is our unique potential. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to expend that in an area where I’m certainly driven and passionate about, but where I’ve be able to see change and change for the better,” Wood says.

“I remember talking to the kids about the joy of a job well done and work as something to be proud of, in and of itself. That satisfaction that you’ve done your best and you’ve given it your all. Nothing comes easy. I think the capacity to work was instilled early in me and I’m grateful for that, because we’ve only got one shot here.”

Wood was a bright, energetic child, who learned early from her parents that “there was no point in getting up in the morning just to be average”. Her ambition to better herself at school made her the target of bullies — she jokes to Williams that it was the reason she became such a fast runner — but she didn’t let it sway her. Her teachers describe her as feisty, with a fierce sense of right and wrong.

She would need her trademark tenacity when she decided to study medicine in London; one of just 12 female students alongside 60 men. While others fainted around her as they cut into cadavers, she was hooked; “I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it, to be blunt”, she says in the book.

Wood was determined to be a surgeon, despite widespread insistence that it was simply not possible for a woman — “I learned a valuable lesson early on to not engage with their negative energy,” she recounts — and in 1985, became one of only a handful of female surgeons in Britain.

During that time, Wood had also met Australian Tony Keirath, who was also training to be a surgeon. They got married 10 weeks later, on the first weekend they were both rostered off.

As Wood encountered burns patients and the life-altering, disfiguring scarring they suffered, she was left with a recurring thought — we must do better. She began to seek out burns cases and when she fell pregnant with son Tom in October 1985, she worked until she could barely reach the operating table.

Shortly after he was born, she was back at work. Wood did with Tom as she would with all her children over the ensuing years — she took him with her to the hospital, feeding him and then leaving him with willing nurses while she was in theatre.

When he was 18 months old and daughter Jess just five weeks, the family moved to Keirath’s home town of Perth. On the first morning, Wood woke her husband urgently just after dawn, insisting they not waste a sunny day. When he laughed and told her she’d get used to the sunshine, she went to the beach and jumped in the ocean — an early morning habit she has maintained ever since.

But when Wood sought work in WA, things were not so idyllic. She arrived at an interview for a plastic surgery position to find that, in the interim, the supervisor had discovered she had two children. There was no way a mother of two could do the job, he insisted. With all due respect, Wood retorted sweetly, that was bull....

She ended up at Sir Charles Gairdner and Hollywood Hospital as a general surgeon, still taking her children with her to work.

Wood laughs at the memory. “To be honest, it is a bit of a blur,” she says. “At the time, it was very unusual, of course . . . but I think if you go to the table with a level of humility and integrity, people will help you. I thought, ‘I need to be here, I need to do this, and I need help’, so off we go. It took me a while to realise that asking for help wasn’t weakness. And it really isn’t, because it builds relationships and builds communities.”

In late 1988, Wood was offered her dream job as a plastic surgery registrar at Royal Perth Hospital and in 1991, became WA’s first female plastic surgeon. The following year, she became director of the Burns Service of Western Australia, a role she still holds.

All the while, Wood was still pursuing her goal of better healing for burns patients.

When Mark Mulder, a young father, was burned on a Perth building site and rushed to hospital, he was given almost no chance of survival.

But Wood, who had been exposed to research on skin grown in the lab early in her career, sent a section from his groin, one of the only parts unburned, to researchers in Melbourne. It took three weeks for the skin sheets to come back, during which time Mulder was read the last rites twice. But 10 months later, he was able to leave the hospital.

Helping to save his life was a seminal experience for Wood and she began her own research at night, when her children were asleep. Not long after, she met Marie Stoner, also working late in the lab. On February 1, 1993 — Wood’s 35th birthday — they set up a skin lab in a tiny room at PMH, courtesy of a $50,000 Telethon grant.

They worked on how to improve healing, fine-tuning techniques, shortening the time frames and finally having their eureka moment one day late in 1994 — that a spray of skin cells could deliver a better result than the traditional sheet. Both ran from the office in opposite directions, returning with any spray bottle they could find to test; the best was the bottle of an Italian mouth freshener, which they bought en masse (“I’m sure they thought I was treating some mass outbreak of halitosis,” Wood tells Williams).

The advances in research would soon be put to the test, on one of Australia’s darkest days — October 12, 2002, the day of the Bali bombings. It was the biggest ever peacetime emergency evacuation of Australians from overseas — more than 100 patients, 28 of whom came to Perth.

Wood co-ordinated four operating theatres running concurrently, 19 surgeons and 130 other clinical staff, treating horrific burns and complicating infections from bombs laced with faeces, wounds cooled with dirty water and rubbish trucks used to convey people to hospital.

“It was like working with the survivors of a war zone. These were devastating, complex injuries, way beyond any injuries I’d ever seen,” Wood remembers in the book. “But my overwhelming sentiment at that time, and even afterwards, was feeling very privileged to be in a position to be able to help. Everything I had learnt to that point had prepared me for this.”

The lengthy section of Under Her Skin dealing with the bombing and its aftermath is wrenching. It tells of the humour of 29-year-old Sydney woman Jodie O’Shea, with burns to 92 per cent of her body; she died within a few hours of arriving on Australian soil, but at least it was in her mother’s arms.

Perth roofing contractor Peter Hughes spent almost six weeks in Adelaide before being transferred back to Perth and this doctor he’d heard so much about. When he said he needed to go to the toilet, Wood, who knew he’d be permanently disabled unless he got out of bed and started rehabilitation, told him to get up and go.

“I hated her. I thought she was the cruellest person on Earth. It was nothing like I’d expected, I can tell you,” Hughes told Williams. “She was like a bull at a gate. Holy s..., man . . . it was pretty much a tough love type of thing.” The pair ultimately became firm friends.

But as Wood’s media profile grew, including her use of the Cellspray technology, there was a backlash from some doctors on the east coast, who criticised it as an experimental treatment. Wood tried hard not to engage but was deeply hurt by what she felt were unnecessary and ill-informed comments, Williams says.

“There is a part of herself that she holds very private, so it took a lot for her to talk about those experiences and feelings,” she says.

The book also gives a glimpse into the light, warm side of Wood. Nurses describe a doctor who never forgets a patient’s name, and who will drop in to visit them on the weekend in her cycling gear, en route to her kids’ sport. Colleagues speak of her genuine emotional connection to patients, and her tears for the ones who don’t make it. One mother recalls when the power went out during her son’s surgery and they couldn’t keep him warm, Wood climbed on top of him and covered him with her body to save his life.

The book recounts that as she was about to take the podium to accept the 2005 Australian of the Year award, an aide hissed at her, “You are Australian, aren’t you?” Wood put on her broadest Yorkshire accent and feigned nonchalance — “Oh, does it matter?”

As the book release date approaches, Wood admits to feeling daunted.

“I’d be surprised if it’s all rainbows and roses,” she says. “But in my experience, there is far more positive in this world than negative; we just give the negative a bit too much oxygen sometimes. I’m not going to do that. I’m not one of those people. I want to give the positive energy the oxygen.

“Also, and I feel a bit churlish when I say this, but there are a lot of people who have been part of this journey and I should honour and respect that and not be too precious. Because it’s a lot more than just me.”

Besides, if it’s a bestseller, she can at least watch the research dollars flow in as she continues to drive towards her life’s goal — scarless healing. She loves her grandchildren but retirement and a rocking chair on the porch are not on the cards.

“My dream for the foundation is that the royalties from the cell therapies, and from all these books, and from the support of our community, will mean we will be able to be driving this research into the future,” Wood says.

“There are so many exciting things . . . to keep going, because it is all groundbreaking. We have collaborators around the world and across Australia, but we know we’re at that edge of knowledge.”

Under Her Skin, by Sue Williams, published by Allen & Unwin, is out on October 5.