Issue 224 July 1, 2009

On the road to somewhere

First-year Deakin University medical student Daniel Wilson will become a doctor, and quite a good one say the experts, when he’s 39 years of age. Given his experiences, he’ll have plenty to offer his patients, Ian Kenins discovers.

As one of the most difficult and expensive courses to enrol in, Medicine has historically attracted a narrow socio-economic pool of students usually excluding anyone from a poor public school, or a history that includes any of dreadlocks, guitar playing, hitchhiking or Buddhism. Yet it is all these qualities, and more, that last month won Deakin University first-year student Daniel Wilson the $5000 George Golding Memorial Scholarship.

Named after the much-respected medico who formed the General Practitioners Association of Geelong (GPAG), the scholarship is presented to a local student predominantly educated in Geelong who has experienced hardship and aspires to contribute to the community. Dr Barbara Hanna, one of the judges, says Daniel ticked all the right boxes.

In accepting the award at a GPAG dinner late last month, Daniel wasn’t overawed by the dozens of doctors in attendance who, in four years’ time, will be his contemporaries. He spoke of his family’s modest, and itinerant, living standards, and briefly of his own wayward past, a history most of his future contemporaries might not relate to but which will probably prove to be one of Daniel’s strengths.

The itinerant part of Daniel’s personality can be attributed to his father, Ted, who began life as a shearer before an injury turned him into the shed cook. From there he graduated to becoming a chef at Lorne’s Erskine House resort. Ted Wilson then found himself back in Geelong casting aluminium in the pot rooms at Alcoa for several years, then, having moved to Brisbane when he and his wife Gwen separated when Daniel was eight, he worked as a groundskeeper then service station attendant before driving semi trailers up and down the eastern seaboard, often with Daniel in the passenger seat.

The only time Daniel wavered during his acceptance speech was when mentioning the “absence” of his father, who passed away in 2007 from cancer. “But I’m sure he’d be very proud, so here’s to you, Dad.” Like all good sons, Daniel also acknowledged his mother, Gwen Mackie, who was present and said it was one of the best and proudest nights of her life.

Daniel, an empathic person by nature, noted his mother’s kindness on the night. “My folks ran the local milk bar behind the (Tait St Primary) school and would deliver the lunch orders from the back of our station-wagon parked on the oval at lunchtime. Mum was a soft touch and would bring extra food every day to provide for the kids that got sent to school without any lunch. And there were always a few.”

Gwen says her nursing career was some influence on her youngest son’s desire to help others. “He was always interested in what I doing.” And he had interests of his own. “When he was 14 he asked me to take him and his best mate Peter to yoga and meditation classes in East Geelong. That’s when the ‘alternative’ part of him started, when he became vegetarian.” As he grew older, he also became something of a drifter – what Gwen describes as his “wandering years” – but she said she never worried. “We instilled a sense of responsibility in the boys, and they would never have gone off the rails,” she says.

After an unimpressive 13 years in the state school system that began at Tait St Primary and included several other schools within Geelong, Daniel completed Year 12 in Brisbane while living with his father, where he admits he was a less-than-exemplary student. “My father worked night shifts, so living with him was a bit too much like being a 17-year-old with his own bachelor pad. But somehow I passed. At that stage I had no intention of studying medicine. I wanted to be a rock star. In fact, I still do.  My reports always said I was capable but could do better.”

Following Year 12, Daniel took a few years off to travel, first by thumb, then by flight. “I probably hitchhiked 60,000 kilometres up and down the eastern seaboard. They were beautiful times, feeling so free.” He didn’t go of the rails, but he did go off the road, once, when his last lift ended up in a ditch when the amphetamine-affected truckie turned left on a right-hand corner.

His first university course was a double degree in applied science and human biology, and Chinese medicine, which he describes as a rude awakening. “I got through but it took me a semester to learn how to study.” He then flew to Asia, travelling throughout Indonesia, Thailand, Tibet, and Nepal, where he fell under the influence of eastern philosophy, medicine and art.

Upon return he enrolled in a fine art course at the Queensland University of Technology, with pen and ink his favoured medium, but left after one year. “I didn’t want my art to be financially motivated,” he says. He found that Buddhism and Taoism fitted in with his philosophy of life, although Daniel says he’s no devotee, as well as being a “bad vegetarian”.

Daniel says a “watershed moment,” when he became seriously ill in India and continued to suffer long after he’d returned home, set him a new direction in life. While it was a GP who took care of his intestinal infections with antibiotics, Daniel credits a herbalist with getting him going again. “He inspired me to want to heal, and I had to know what he knew.”

Determined to pursue his new-found Eastern philosophy, Daniel applied to study Chinese medicine at Melbourne’s RMIT in 1997, slashing his dreadlocks before an interview with the medical academics. However, full-time study does little to suit a financially healthy lifestyle, so Daniel waited on tables and washed dishes. It provided ample time to meditate on thoughts that might have included a fellow student named Lea he met over an acupuncture table and with whom he organised some “study sessions”. The two are now married with two young children.

If his own illness proved a watershed moment, it was a patient’s illness that provided another, leading Daniel to take a medically-mainstream path in life. After graduating from RMIT, Daniel and Lea established a practice in Cairns, in north Queensland, before returning to run a clinic in Sandringham. One woman’s many ailments made Daniel realise he couldn’t be a “one-stop-shop”.

“There were blood pressure tests, heart tests, things where I had to rely on someone else (a GP) I wasn’t in contact with. I couldn’t do that, legally,” he recalls.

And so began the serious cramming necessary to sit the Graduate Australian Medical School Admissions Test, or GAMSAT, required of prospective medical students. The exam is universally regarded as the “entrance exam from hell,” but Daniel says: “I really enjoyed it. I was able to bang on about ethics, empathy and dogma.” It helped that Lea had gone through the same ordeal 12 months prior.

Oddly, the pressure appeals to Daniel. He likes the notion that GPs are under greater scrutiny and have a higher standard of care expected of them than others in the non-mainstream medical fields – not that he is going to abandon the eastern doctrines he learnt. “There’s no ethical conflict,” he says of advising alternative remedies, “just the need to educate the patient. I’ll have a complete training in both and be able to marry the two.”

However, he says traditional medicine is the most concrete way to help. “When someone needs a doctor, they really need help. It’s hands-on, and personal, and I like the ongoing relationships you develop with whole families. I like to think I can relate to anyone – hitchhiking taught me that. Jumping in a car with a complete stranger – if you can’t relate, you sink.”

Daniel still has to complete four-and-a-half years of study before he enters the next phase of his life. He says he’d be happy to start with Barwon Health, which he says has a good reputation for looking after its doctors. As the husband of a fellow medical student, study is a common conversation topic at home. “We’re both nerds like that.”

But he’s also interested in looking after his own quality of life. He still plays the guitar, as well as the banjo and bass, while Lea plays the piano. The study in their Highton home is also a makeshift recording studio, as is the shed when things get busy around exam time, although the hallway has the best acoustics.

Daniel says he has enough material now for an album, suggesting the rock star dream remains. “Any pursuit has to be sustainable, to have time for family and other pursuits, otherwise you burn out and wonder why’d you bother in the first place?”

A visit to the future Dr Daniel Wilson should prove an interesting and enriching experience for patients.

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