Everything to Live For: The Inspirational Story of Turia Pitt (19 page)

I experienced improvements quite soon, especially in my flexibility. When Michael picked me up at the weekends he would immediately notice the difference in my skin: reduced redness and an increased suppleness. At the clinic I became friends with an Irish guy called Matthew; the poor guy had worn a sheep costume to a Halloween party and some idiot set him alight. No one else spoke English so it was good to have someone to compare battle scars with.

One of the best things about the clinic was regaining my independence from Michael and my family. It made me understand that there is a piece inside of me that the fire didn’t get – that I am still an independent woman; I am still Turia.

The clinic was also good at showing me little ways to improve my self-reliance, such as providing a gadget to help me put my shoes on. Those things were very good for my self-confidence. The clinic made me a whole lot of splints to stretch my hand out and a hard plastic mask which, although not comfortable, did wonders for my skin.

Everything I learnt to do at the clinic helped me become more comfortable
in
my skin and
with
my skin and I took the big step of going without my mask in public. And you know what – no one even looked twice. I also regained some of my old Turia confidence – I can speak a bit of French (albeit badly) so it was me that ordered our meals, gave instructions to the taxi drivers and organised our weekends etc.

Coming home we arrived in Sydney at 11 pm at night and had to leave first thing in the morning as I had been booked to speak at the Shoalhaven Women’s Conference. There were about 300 women and I received my first ever standing ovation. I spoke about my experiences before the fire and leading up to it and what I remembered about the day. Then I gave an overview of my time in hospital and subsequent rehabilitation. Here is how I ended my speech:

I’m not saying that this experience has been a walk in the park. I’m not saying that I never lost it, that I never lashed out at the people I loved, or that I didn’t break down in tears when confronted with the reality of my journey. But overall, I tried to remain positive and optimistic about the future.

And what is there not to be optimistic about? After all, there is a lot of hope for burn survivors these days – if doctors can change Michael Jackson’s skin colour, surely there’s a lot of things they can do to improve our quality of life. My brainy surgeons can do anything – even turn a man into a woman, and a woman into a man. I think making me a new nose will be relatively easy by comparison. Although, as my surgeon has told me, I will look like a werewolf for a period of three weeks following my nose operation. When I asked if I would be able to go outside, he advised only if I wanted to scare the little kiddies away.

I put up with all the operations because I focus on having a better result. Sometimes you need to take one step back to move two steps forward. As technology improves at its current exponential rate, my clever surgeons will be able to do more and more. I’ll probably have surgeries for the rest of my life. But that’s simply because I never give up – I want the best results, and I’ll do anything to get them. I’ve actually just returned from a six-week stint at a burns clinic in France, and I reckon my family will be blown away by the improvements in my skin when they see them.

So, where am I now? I reckon we live in one of the most beautiful places in Australia, I’ve got great support from my family and friends, and I’ve got the best partner in the world. I’m studying my Masters in Engineering, I’m working towards an MBA and I’m also writing a book. I’ve got plenty of goals for the future, such as having a family with Michael. For now though, I’m focusing on my upcoming operations as well as the 20km Lake Argyle swim, which will take part in this time next year.

When I think about what happened to me, a lot of questions spring to mind. Was it fate that I was there in the fire? Maybe I have a different purpose in life now. Or maybe I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t have the answers to any of those questions, and I don’t think anyone really knows until they cross over. But I do believe in making the best out of your circumstances. Never ever give up. Life can deal you some rotten cards sometimes, but it’s how you play which is important.

I was so excited that everyone had enjoyed my speech; it gave me confidence for a future in public speaking.

I have come a long way from the total despair days in the Concord Burns Unit. Naturally anyone reading my story will know what amazing love and support I have had from my family – I don’t know many mums who are as cool as mine. I have had Dad and Genji to help me get strong and younger brothers to make me laugh; they were both shorter than me when I went to Kununurrra, but now tower over me. They are still so sweet and kind – nothing is too much trouble. But to have the love of someone like Michael is beyond special. And he must owe much of his lovely nature to his parents, Julie and Gary.

I’ve gone from not being able to do anything much when I first came home to having a really busy life. I particularly like studying, so I’ve been keeping my brain active. In 2012 I started my Masters degree in Mining Engineering at the University of New South Wales, and in 2013 I enrolled to do my Masters of Business Administration with Southern Cross University. My days are extremely full – physio, the LPG machine, facial exercises, yoga, personal training, study and socialising.

When I came home I was afraid that everyone would treat me differently, even friends. But to my relief that didn’t happen. My close friends have all been fantastic and I wouldn’t have come as far without them. One of the things that I like about my friends is their sense of humour. When I told Briggs that I was worried about my left wedding ring finger being amputated she said, ‘Well, at least you’ll still be able to give people the bird (make the rude stick finger)!’

But I have to say that former peripheral friends have dropped off the radar (which is fine) and I did find the attitudes of some people rather unenlightened – for instance I was pretty annoyed when people told me they thought I was sitting at home bored all day. Anyone who
really
knows me, knows I can never be bored, I always have a million things to do. Then there were other blinkered individuals who pretended that nothing had happened to me and just talked about the parties that they had been to.

I have been blown away by the support the Ulladulla community has shown for me. This is probably best demonstrated by the Masquerade Ball in Ulladulla that my mates (and in particular Briggs and Nicola) organised in April 2012 to raise funds for my medical and other expenses. They decided to make it a masquerade ball in deference to me having to wear a mask. It was a sell-out for 500 people, and that’s huge for Ulladulla. Michael drove me to the Community Centre, where the ball was in full swing, and I was overwhelmed. I gave a little speech but I was still very frail and tired easily and we left after an hour. I was so grateful for everyone’s efforts; it was this event that gave us the funds to pay for the trip to France.

One of the more unexpected positives to come out of such a terrible event is the friendship that has developed between me and the others who met for the first time that day. Over the last year Kate and I have become quite close and email each other regularly. I saw Hully and Hal in Sydney shortly after I came out of hospital and we (Michael and me) struck up a rapport with both of them and have continued to stay in touch. In November 2012, Hully, Hal, Kate and her friend Andrew, who had been a volunteer on the day of the fire, and Michael and I rented a house in Ulladulla for a weekend. We hung out together for the first time since the fire and it was fantastic. We were in good spirits and we drank a few beers, ate pizza, played board games and just relaxed. We did speak about the fire and compared scars but we didn’t focus on it. I was so proud of Kate – she seemed to be one hundred per cent independent and I was bit jealous of that, but I was also proud of how far I’d come in my own independence since we saw each other at the inquiry. I think she was proud of me too.

I had just got my licence back – it had expired while I was in hospital – and I played tour guide and drove them around my beautiful Ulladulla. Michael went fishing on the Sunday and the rest of us just cruised the beaches and I showed them the great surfing places, we had coffee at a local winery and later we visited Michael’s parents. I know they liked meeting everyone they’d heard so much about. We plan to do the 20-kilometre Lake Argyle swim together.

Driving again was cool. It was funny seeing the looks on people’s faces as I drove around Ulladulla wearing my black face mask in our blue Holden commodore station wagon (Michael sold the little blue Hyundai). In the early months, when I appeared in public and people stared I would be a bit upset – Michael would say they were only looking because I had the best boyfriend. I didn’t mind if it was children looking, that’s natural curiosity, but when adults came up to me in the street and asked what happened I was a bit pissed off, thinking they just wanted to sticky beak. I’m less sensitive now and realise people just wanted to know; their interest wasn’t malicious.

In a way wearing the mask has been a positive – it has raised the profile of burns injuries and that flows on to the issue of skin and tissue donation. When I’m out in public and people look at me, I know many will recognise me from the publicity: ‘See that girl in the mask – she’s the girl who was caught in that fire.’ Kate was just as badly burnt as me but because she wasn’t burnt on her face, people don’t immediately associate her with the fire in the Kimberley.

At the beginning of 2013, I felt I was getting to a good stage of my journey. I stopped crying and started laughing again; I’m a bit like Mum and love to laugh, and every time I laughed I could see Michael’s face light up, hearing the old Turia. I didn’t need to medicate my pain any more.

Some things I will never be able to do and some things I can never get back; for instance, due to my damaged skin I can’t regulate my body temperature (one of the main functions of skin) so when it’s cold I’m really cold and when it’s hot, I’m hot. This will never get better but that’s okay because it doesn’t affect the major areas that matter. While I was in hospital, sometimes I would ask Michael to put blankets on me and once he covered me with a total of eight blankets! Then at night I would be burning up and sweating and kick off all my blankets. I would occasionally get so hot that I would ask the nurses to put ice packs on my groin and under my arm pits.

My future with Michael will be different to the one I envisaged. Although the skin on my stomach was shaved to provide grafts to burnt areas, I can still have children. However I will probably need help with a baby – maybe a nanny for warming bottles and other tricky movements. Michael and I bought an apartment in Mollymook near Ulladulla in March 2013 and I did all the negotiating. Since coming back from France we have had a great time decorating it.

When I think about what has happened to me I link it to my long-felt desire to ‘make a difference’. Briggs reminded me that when we were teenagers I said I wanted to make a name for myself doing something worthwhile one day; someone who did something that was meaningful to society; in no way did I think this life-changing trauma would be the way I would be known publicly.

Of course I have asked the question ‘Why me?’ – wouldn’t anyone in my position? But the other side of me has always answered, ‘Why not me?’ I knew I was a good person before this happened to me so I asked myself why I was being tested. What was this agony for? I survived the school bus crash when I was a teenager and I survived the fire; there has to be some meaning in my ability to survive. How could I make something meaningful out of this and validate what happened? I realised that one way would be to help others who need donated skin like I did. I was dumbfounded when I found out that there was no skin available in Australia to help me and that the skin that saved my life had to come from an unknown donor on the other side of the world. I want to raise awareness for skin and tissue donation in Australia in the hope that skin banks will always have enough supplies to help save other lives.

I hope that telling my story goes some way to helping this aim and to inspire others who have challenging issues in their lives. I’m confident about becoming a motivational speaker; I have become an unofficial ambassador for DonateLife and have started to advocate the need for organ and tissue donation.

Since I contacted DonateLife I have been involved with a couple of its events; I was invited to the launch of the 2013 DonateLife Week at Kirribilli House in Sydney and again to Canberra later to take part in the DonateLife Walk. In June 2014, I plan to trek the Inca Trail in Peru to raise money for Interplast – a not-for-profit organisation in which Professor Haertsch is a volunteer medical specialist. Interplast provides medical treatment for people in the Asia-Pacific region who are disabled as a result of congenital or acquired medical conditions, such as cleft lip and palate or burn scar contractures. Some of my friends, including Briggs, Nicola, Michael’s sister Shae, my friend Mary Kavanagh from Kununurra and another friend, Shae Clayton, are planning to join me.

I’ve accepted the way I look now, although it’s not perfect – yet. One day I will look beautiful again; that is, beautiful to me, because the people I love say I am beautiful to them anyway. Surgery will be ongoing and I will probably have surgical corrections for the rest of my life. In the beginning my surgery was based around function. But in the future it will be based around appearance. There will probably be little things I’m not happy with because I’m a perfectionist. As medical technology for burns improves, there will no doubt be many more things the doctors can do for me. I know it will be a couple of years before I can surf again and a couple of years before I’m confident enough to wear shorts. All of that aesthetic stuff will take time but I’m still young and I have a long life ahead of me and I have more ambitious plans for the future; I want to gain my doctorate in Engineering and go back to work in mining. I also want to become an endurance athlete: I want to run another ultramarathon; I want to compete in an ironman. I am dedicated to raising awareness for skin donation and I would like to see a burns rehabilitation centre, similar to the one in France, set up in Australia. I have so much to do . . . you might say I have gone from the despair of not wanting to live to having everything to live for.