‘She’s worth her weight in gold’: Surgeon Alison Wray reunites with patients after lifesaving procedures
You’d never guess that these thriving children have all been through life-threatening illnesses. Their families say they owe their lives to one special surgeon – and one big team.
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The beginning of their stories could not have been more different: a freak accident playing in the backyard; a look of concern at a maternal health check; a sudden seizure one morning.
But these three incredible children – 13-year-old Grace, 11-year-old Milo and eight-year-old Zoe – each are full of gratitude for the neurosurgeon who saved their lives.
Asked how it felt to know she had given the three children in front of her a second shot at life, neurosurgeon Dr Alison Wray is quick to share the praise with her colleagues and the community’s support of the Good Friday Appeal.
“Every one of those kids represents a whole team of people that pulled together and made that work,” she says.
“It’s a real privilege to be here at a hospital where we can respond and … save those really difficult cases.
“It’s the support of the community that allows us to take the standard care up two or three notches.”
Wray says it was a special sight to watch the trio “playing and joking and just being normal kids” in a park outside the Royal Children’s Hospital.
It’s a very different scene compared to when the kids first came into the hospital’s care.
GRACE JAMES
Wray says she would “never forget” the sight of then 10-year-old Grace, who was rushed to the hospital via ambulance in 2020 and needed emergency surgery.
She had been running around in the backyard when her dog, who she was holding on a leash, caused her to fall against a trailer filled with building materials.
Her parents heard whimpering and found their youngest daughter on the ground.
Wray says Grace was unconscious when she saw her, and the only visible injury was “a little cut on her head”.
“It wasn’t until we got the scan and saw the severity of her injury that we realised … she had fallen on to the building materials, and that a protruding rebar (steel bar) had penetrated from her skull right to the skull base and injured the main blood supply to that side of the brain,” she says.
“Adults would not survive what she has survived and they certainly wouldn’t have recovered like she’s recovered.”
Somehow, Grace had pulled herself off the bar in the moments before she was found.
Dad Bradley James says their lives went “from all being well on a Thursday afternoon March 12, 5pm to heading off to hospital not knowing our futures”.
“Through the lifesaving efforts of the amazing surgeons and staff, we got her back,” he says.
Mum Vanessa James says Wray and the intensive care team “never gave up on” Grace, who endured two emergency surgeries and spent 13 days in a coma.
“Her brain was swelling and they needed to remove part of her skull to help with the swelling, and they also had to remove a clot that was in her brain,” she says.
“We were really walking the tightrope of potentially anything happening. Even though we were in probably our darkest place, we always knew that we were in a safe place.”
Grace’s recovery is testament not only to Wray’s work, but also the fighting spirit of Grace – who spent four months on the rehabilitation ward, learning to walk and talk again while navigating some restricted mobility.
“When she was in the wheelchair in the hospital and … a nurse asked her ‘Grace what do you want to do in life’ and Grace looked up at her and said ‘I want to represent Australia in the Olympics’.”
Vanessa says nothing could ever compare with the day they were handed Grace’s discharge papers after months in hospital.
“Everything we had ever wanted just paled in comparison from that very moment,” she says.
Grace returned last month for what is hoped to be her final surgery – to close a gap in her skull – and is now 13 years old.
She was a keen athlete and cyclist before her accident and says she has her sights on Australia’s athletics team for the 2028 Paralympics.
“I’m very competitive … and I love to run,” she says.
And thanks to her determined spirit and the life-changing work of Wray and her team, she can.
MILO MACHINGAIFA
Amid the horror unfolding before them, parents Francesca and Clarence Machingaifa found solace in the fact Wray and the Royal Children’s Hospital would be the ones to care for their eight-year-old son Milo.
It was July 2020, and Milo had been diagnosed with a brain tumour after he suffered a seizure.
Dad Clarence says it was the worst day of their lives.
“The best way I can describe it is, someone turns the light off momentarily,” he says.
“But it helped to know that he was at one of the best children’s hospitals, with one of the best neurosurgeons.
“That really helped us among all the chaos and intensity and the heaviness of it.”
Francesca says within days of the seizure, Milo was in surgery to remove what they later found was a rare, high-grade tumour, followed by weeks of radiotherapy.
“Alison got all of the tumour which was amazing,” she says.
“If there’s someone that’s cutting through your kid’s brain millimetre by millimetre, doing that kind of work, you want someone like Alison.”
Their respect for Wray goes far beyond her surgical skill.
They remember the way she spoke to Milo, who Francesca says had “always been like an old man in a kid’s body”.
“I love the way she’s treated Milo and talked to him, met him where he’s at and has been so patient with his questions.”
She says while Milo faces long-term treatment side effects, he is doing well, back at school with his friends, playing soccer and sporting a Harry Potter-like “lightning bolt scar”.
“We often joke that Alison put some more facts in there when she was in there because he just loves facts,” she says.
Clarence says as horrible as it was to have a child go through this, they were also grateful.
“We recognise that we’re lucky too, he’s still here,” he says.
ZOE LEAMAN
Zoe’s mum Ashley Leaman can reel off a list of happy memories of her eight-year-old daughter.
“She broke in her own pony last year,” she says. “She rides horses. She rides motor-bikes. She likes to go hunting with her dad.”
They are so meaningful because, before those precious moments, there were others when she and dad Paul Leaman thought their daughter wouldn’t make it.
“What Alison has done for Zoe, prolonging her life and the quality of life that she has, is something that you just cannot put a price on. She’s worth her weight in gold,” she says.
“We’ve still got our beautiful, happy, healthy girl.”
Zoe was born with a large, rare cyst in the back of her brain called a Blake’s pouch cyst.
After an emotional pregnancy – during which the cyst was initially misdiagnosed as a different brain condition – Ashley and Paul were overjoyed to bring home a baby girl who they were told needed to be monitored, but was fine.
It became clear this wasn’t the case during Zoe’s 12-week maternal health visit and the nurse – who had gone unusually silent before grabbing her colleague – sent them to the Royal Children’s Hospital, concerned by the shape of Zoe’s head.
The cyst had caused hydrocephalus – a dangerous build-up of fluid in the brain – and little Zoe underwent her first surgery at just three months old to insert a drain, called a VP shunt, into her brain.
It marked the beginning of years of operations and holidays in the hospital, an hour and a half from their home in Skye.
Zoe spent so much time there, Ashley says she asked for an ECG machine for her third birthday.
Wray says she was worried “she was going to be one of those kids who would require regular operations”.
But then, they made a breakthrough. They discovered Zoe had a second brain condition.
“She had abnormal development at the junction between the base of the brain and the top of the spinal cord,” Wray says.
“That’s why she was getting so sick so quickly when her shunt wasn’t working.”
A four-year-old Zoe underwent another operation in 2018 and, to the delight of Wray, has not needed another one since.
It’s a milestone – four years procedure-free – that means everything to her family, who Ashley says “lived in survival mode for years”.
And while the worry for her daughter’s health never leaves her, nor does her gratitude for Wray.
“You just live with love and fun and gratitude and laughter each day,” she says. “And it’s all possible because of her (Alison).”
It’s hard to believe that a neurosurgeon as renowned as Wray ever considered a different surgical speciality, but the truth is she “tried really hard” to swap out of neurosurgery.
But thankfully for Grace, Milo, Zoe and countless other children, she fell in love with the field, its challenges and rewards.
When she has a difficult day – which is the harsh reality of a job like hers – she says she flicks through cards and photos from the families of children she has saved.
“I just have my little collection of things that remind me why we keep doing this,” she says.
“I get such a kick out of seeing the kids do well.”
And the sight of a smiling Zoe, Grace and Milo was another reminder, another memory for the collection, of the lifesaving work possible at the Royal Children’s Hospital.
“Seeing them as they are now really is a great advertisement for why we push a little bit extra, go a bit harder and do everything we can to get to these amazing outcomes for these kids,” Wray says.
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