WEEKEND PROFILE: Mark Fraundorfer

Last week he became the first New Zealand surgeon to freeze a man's prostate, as part of a radical cancer operation. As Jo-Marie Brown discovers, there are many other ways in which Bay urologist
Name: Mark Fraundorfer
Age: 53.
Previous lives: I was born in a place called Eshowe in South Africa but moved to New Zealand when I was about six, so I mostly grew up in Hamilton. I went to Hamilton Boys' High, then Otago University. I originally did marine biology, then went to medical school. From there I went to Wellington and Tauranga as a house surgeon.
In Tauranga, there were meant to be 10 house surgeons but we were always three short so in those days we used to start work on a Friday morning and finish on a Monday night.
You were lucky to get three or four hours' sleep. That was in 1976/77.
Then I went to Australia and Europe to do further medical training. I was mainly interested in diving medicine in those days - that's why I came to Tauranga, because of the scuba diving. I set up the first commercial dive training school in Tauranga with a guy called Jack Stevens. We built the first dive pool and while I was at university I developed and wrote the altitude dive tables.
I met a guy who kept getting the bends diving for gold in the Clutha River. That was because he was surfacing at altitude so we worked out how to get around that.
I went to Australia to do my diploma in hyperbaric medicine with the Australian Navy. They had a diving medicine course for civilians and their own officers. That was in 1978.
Then I went on to become the medical adviser to the New Zealand Underwater Association. I became their accident investigator for fatal diving accidents. Over 14 years, I investigated about 120 fatalities. Only one was a truly unavoidable accident. The rest had all broken the rules.
The most dangerous marine life-form in New Zealand is the scallop, because more people die trying to collect scallops than from any other activity.
So how did you get into urology?
I did general practice in Townsville in Australia and my first delivery was undiagnosed twins. Then I realised I needed a bit more obstetrics training. I spent a year doing obstetrics and gynaecology but I found getting up at night all the time was not the best.
While I had been a house surgeon in Tauranga, I had worked for Harry Watts, who was at the time one of the most innovative urologists in the country. He had said a few times that I should think about doing urology and coming back to Tauranga. I came back finally in 1986 to take up a fulltime position with Harry.
What does urology involve?
Urology is a branch of surgery to do with the urinary tract, which starts at the kidney, goes down to the bladder and then in males goes through the prostate and in both sexes the urethra or water pipe. We're also the male equivalent of a gynaecologist. We do all the surgery on male genitalia. People have this misconception that urology is all about old men. In fact, my patients have ranged from one-day-old babies through to a 100-year-old Gallipoli veteran.
What conditions do you treat?
It's a very hi-tech speciality. We tend to do a lot of stuff through telescopes or using hi-tech equipment. We do a lot of cancers, we do reconstructions where congenital abnormalities are present.
We deal with stones, of course. We try and make wet women dry and dry men wet - in other words, relieving symptoms of incontinence and blockages. Urology is such a narrow area, therefore we can be very good at a small amount of stuff.
What have been some major achievements in your career?
Being part of developing a unique team. Undoubtedly, for the size of Tauranga, we can be very proud of our achievements on a national and international stage. Peter Gilling, Andre Westenberg and I are often the first to introduce new techniques and we make sure we've got the latest technology. We're a very proficient and progressive team.
On the medical business side myself and other colleagues really developed Promed House as the first of the multi-specialist centres in New Zealand. We broke that ground and we saved Norfolk Hospital from financial ruin and brought that up to speed to be a very efficient and great little hospital.
We also bought Wakefield Hospital in Wellington from the receiver and, in my view, in terms of private hospitals, that's unequalled and has been a successful public float.
I guess finally, we've had an exciting ride developing the Holmium laser to deal with enlarged prostates and that's an experience that very few people are privileged to go through.
Of course, every successful operation is an achievement and you've got to look at that side of it too.
What are the challenges in your line of work?
The thing that has saddened me the most is the expansion of political correctness whereby you almost look at every person you see as someone who could potentially complain and ruin your career.
Doctors certainly have a lot of waking up to do in terms of arrogance and ethics but the pendulum has swung so far now that a lot of my colleagues are constrained by this constant fear of criticism and complaint.
Patients who complain do so rarely and generally they have good cause. The greatest problem is communication.
I guess the other thing that saddens me is that I think Tauranga Hospital is now the worst facility in the country.
Virtually every hospital in New Zealand has been refurbished. It's a disgrace that the Government has punished Tauranga by refusing to fund an upgrade before now and what they have agreed to fund is only going to be sticking plaster the way this town is growing.
There are fewer beds in that hospital now than there were in 1975. It's amazing the staff just keep on keeping on.
What do you enjoy the most about your job?
The individual contact with a lot of people. You never get sick of the great satisfaction you get when you carry out an operation and it achieves what you want it to achieve. I also like the hi-tech part of my surgery and my favourite part is the paediatric surgery, which I enjoy the most.
What do you do in your spare time?
I used to run a marine charter boat with a couple of friends but then I got into flying helicopters and that's overtaken a lot of other things. Just flying different routes around the country - I can't get enough of that. I try and go to as many clinics as I can using my helicopter.
I try and go into the bush a lot and have started getting back into trout fishing. I also enjoy camping and tramping and hunting and I enjoy getting out on to the farm. I grew up on a farm in South Africa.
We left at a very young age so I've always been keen to get back to owning a farm. I have one I can visit quite regularly called Flock Hill Station. I own it in partnership with a long-time friend of mine. It's in Arthurs Pass in the Canterbury high country and that's where they're filming the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the moment.
How did that come about?
We got talking to the people at Christchurch Helicopters and asked them if they would keep an eye on the place for us in exchange for them having access to the area for training.
So they became our custodians and they started showing scouts for this movie around the country. They kept coming back to this big limestone hill called Flock Hill. Eventually the movie producers and director Andrew Adamson said that was where they wanted to film.
Have you been down to watch them film?
Yes. I've just come back and if you want to watch paint dry, that's more exciting than watching a movie being made. They've got about 650 people on site. They start at 3:30am with hair and make-up and they're often there until 9:30 at night. It's an interesting experience.
So do you get free tickets to the premier?
We don't even know if we'll make the cut on the invitation list, let alone free tickets. Generally speaking it's been great for the area and I think they'd like to come back. Andrew Adamson, who directed Shrek and Shrek 2, is an incredibly nice guy and it's amazing to see these people work.
What is the most interesting thing you've ever done?
I lived underwater for three weeks in the Bahamas in an underwater habitat when I was meant to be a medical student in a hospital. One of the doctors there had some friends who ran this thing. They heard about my diving experience and they gave me a job doing a whole lot of research.
I also went to the Galapagos Islands earlier this year to do goat eradication. They were destroying the habitat for giant tortoises. Helicopters are usually banned but a colleague of mine asked me to go as part of a team. That was a unique experience.
What do you enjoy most about living in the Western Bay?
I guess when I first came here I liked the small town by the sea in a nice climate. I guess that's still why most of us come here. It's a much bigger town now but it still has that small-town feel to it. Every time you go to Auckland you realise why you don't want to live there.
Even though Tauranga has grown hugely, it still feels like a community, people still feel positive and, at the end of the day, you can't get away from the fact that it's in a beautiful part of the world.