The success story of burns victims, Rafika and Uswatun
30 September, 2009
At Brisbane Airport, I watched as two scared little girls emerged from Customs with their parents. 'My God!' I gasped, my eyes flooding with tears. I had never seen such terrible injuries.
The little girls' faces were heavily scarred and they could barely walk. They'd been so badly burnt, the scar tissue had caused their skin to contract as it healed, shrinking their arms and legs. Their fingers and toes were cruelly distorted as a result of their injuries.
'Welcome to Australia,' l said, hugging them after composing myself. Sisters Rafika and Uswatun Rasmidden had suffered the burns in a fire at their home on Simeulue lsland, lndonesia, in 2005. An earthquake had toppled an oil lamp and caused the blaze in which their father, Pak, had also been injured.
I had heard about their plight at a ROMAC meeting months before.
Rafika, six, and Uswatun, five, had been our top priority for a while. 'We have one of the worst cases we've ever had coming over from Indonesia,' I remember Elaine Morgan, the carers' manager, saying.
I'd flinched in sympathy as she recounted how the girls had been saved by their father after he'd run back into the inferno. Rafika and Uswatun had been taken to a medical centre but had nearly died due to a lack of proper medical care
The two girls show their injuries shortly after arrival.
They were discovered by Jodi Ranford from the Red Cross 18 months later, who contacted ROMAC for help. I'd been asked to find a home for the family to live in while the girls got some much-needed medical care here in Australia.
After meeting them at the airport that day in April, 2007, I took them to stay at the house of a family in Auchenflower, Brisbane.
I then took the girls to the Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, to be seen by Professor Roy Kimble, a burns expert. After an initial examination, Professor Kimble pulled me to one side.
'This is the worst case I've ever seen,' he said gravely. 'Will you be able to help them?' I asked, worried. 'l'll do my best,' he promised me.
Rafika's elbow was fixed at 90 degrees. Her hand was so contracted by scarring that the joints in her fingers were all dislocated and both girls' toes were dislocated for the same reason. Because the muscles and bones couldn't grow, they'd twisted on top of each other.
With translators, we explained to their parents Pak, 37, and Ariani, 33, that the doctors were going to have to get artificial skin flown over from Japan. "The artificial skin we're using is made from pigs' tendons." we told them.
Their faces dropped. 'That goes against our religion.' they said tearfully through a translator. Being Muslims, the use of pigs posed a problem.
So we called the lslamic Council of Queensland and it was decided that as the girls weren't actually eating the pigs, it would be okay.
Relieved, the surgeons got to work immediately. Within a month. the skin had repaired well enough to allow further skin grafts from the children's thighs. After a few weeks, the tissue was like normal skin. It was a huge breakthrough.
Meanwhile, l found the Rasmiddins their own house to stay in. But I was always around, making sure the girls were okay and the family had everything they needed. 'The hills are alive, with the sound of music,' I sang to them when their dressings were being changed.
After a while, l noticed they would sing along too. I sang nursery rhymes and anything I could think of and they learnt the words
'The girls should go to school,' I commented to my husband, Robed, one afternoon. 'Their English is so good now that they'd get so much out of it.'
So I approached Kuraby State School, a little school only a short walk from the Rasmiddins' house.
The principal, Neil Waters immediately agreed to the girls joining the school. 'How would you like to go to school?' I asked Rafika and Uswatun later.
A happier group later in the treatment - the two girls with mum and dad plus Judy Parcy, president Stan Shneider, Jill Ellis and David Bonifant.
Their little faces lit up. 'School,' they gasped, as if I'd just suggested a trip to Disneyland, and they hugged and kissed me. They quickly made friends and adored going to school. When the holidays began, you've never seen faces so sad. 'Why can't we go to school, Judy?' they'd sulk.
Some of their friends would ask them about their burns, but the girls never felt ready to talk about the fire. ln November 2008, we took the family to Sea World with the Starlight Foundation.
When they saw dolphins and whales for the first time I thought their eyes would pop out of their heads.
'What does that say?' Rafika asked pointing to a T-shirt with 'free hugs' written on it at a stall.
When l explained what it meant, she threw her arms around me. It had taken her eight months to open up to me because she'd been so traumatised. She was a totally
different girl now.
Both little girls love to swim and they often draw me pictures of trees and the sun - remarkable considering the state of their hands and limbs when they first arrived here in Australia.
They each still have another six operations to go and they will have had 30 each by the time they leave.
It will be a very sad day when the family has to go home to Indonesia. 'We'll miss you when we have to leave.' Uswatun said. 'Yes, but you'll still be here with me,' l said.
Two little frowning faces looked up at me, confused.
'But how will we?' asked Rafika. I pointed to my heart and then to my head. 'ln here,' I smiled. But l'm sure they'll come back to Australia one day. After all, they're like little Aussies now and I'm rapt we were able to help them.
The Take5 magazine first published this story earlier in 2009.
