Healing hands give new hope

ELEANOR BLACK meets a skin specialist whose freely offered skills help burns survivors and cancer victims to face life anew.


Dominique Bossavy approaches burns victims as though they were works of art.

The French skin specialist mixes customised inks in tiny pots and applies them to uncomfortably puckered skin with a small electronic tool fitted with up to 18 needles, handling it like a paintbrush and gently drawing features on the faces of people traumatised by a radically changed appearance.

In New Zealand for two weeks, she will spend much of her time travelling to treat burns and cancer survivors who are unable to afford her expertise. Ms Bossavy's airfare, accommodation and equipment are covered by the various international burns foundations of which she is a member. She gives her time free.

The Paris-based dermal pigmentation expert takes two or three voluntary trips a year, primarily to Japan, Germany and Canada, although her growing reputation may force her further afield.

"I don't turn anybody down. I get calls from Panama, I get calls from Argentina."

In a lilting accent and with elegant hand gestures, she explains what drives her to care for people she has never met and so far from home.

"These people hate the way they look. They have to relearn how to live with themselves and deal with this monster they see in the mirror every day. There are traumatic memories trapped in that skin."

Often Ms Bossavy works with people whose bones are distorted, noses are gone and skin has been grafted, leaving areas of discoloration. She breaks down scar tissue, reforms lip lines, tattoos eyebrows and eyelashes and visually smooths skin texture with shading.

Clients are also emotionally scarred and her role often becomes that of confidante.

"Sometimes I will touch them and they get angry. It doesn't last long and I calm them down, but you have to let them be what they want to be."

In Hamilton this week, she worked on Trish Ball, a truck driver who 12 years ago was dragged from her burning vehicle after a head-on collision with a car.

She received burns to 60 per cent of her body. Mrs Ball wears a wig, has a prosthetic ear and now has a permanent left eyebrow.

"It's so amazing! I can't stop looking at myself in the mirror. I always drew an eyebrow on with pencil, but if I'm tired and rub my eyes, I rub it off."

Ms Bossavy is based in Rotorua, the guest of Yvonne Skellern, who runs a burns support group and met the specialist at the World Burn Congress in San Francisco in June.

Mrs Skellern knows firsthand the horror of dealing with burns. Her son, Kent, was 10 when he waded into a thermally heated stream at Taupo. His gumboots sank into mud and filled with boiling water, scarring him for life.

"I didn't know a thing about burns and I think of all the things that should have happened medically and didn't ... Really, it was too late for Kent."

But it is never too late for burns victims to regain their confidence, says Ms Bossavy.

"It's about making people feel better. There is a richness about being able to give to others ... some kind of good feeling you can't buy in a shop."