Good News Stories Change Lives

When good news stories happen, they certainly have the power to change lives. This good news of the day positively impacted a number of lives, and one of those was the reporter, Peter Buckley.

Peter reflects "Good news stories like these feed the heart and help clarify the mind as to the real factors of life"... you'd think they would be front page news everyday!

A Sliver of Life

by Peter Buckley
peterbuckley.com.au

Why would you leave a job at one of the highest rating radio stations in Australia??... You’d have to be nuts!!

The question has been asked many times, often by people at parties or gatherings who may have even heard me doing bulletins on-air...

It's not just one thing that inspires you to such a bold transition.

But in hindsight, one seemingly innocuous good news story and media conference had a major impact.

The fact I'd been behind the microphone for 24 years, 18 as a newsman, had something to do with my disenchantment... plus the changing face of the industry.

And perhaps the most compelling was the constant challenge in my head as to how to make a positive influence in the ever-negative world of news.

Try as you might, good news stories rarely come along because, for some strange reason, humanity prefers to hear about the horrors, fears, degradations, abuses, biases and absurdities of others. It may be their way of distancing themselves from the idiocy of the general populace, by feeling as though they're looking from a distance at this ridiculousness, thereby not actually being part of it. A case of "isn’t that terrible, I'm glad it wasn't me/us".

Radio news definitely has its fun times. You wouldn't spend so long in it if it was all hard work and no play, but the tight timeframes and pressures of producing bulletins are not for the faint hearted. Many a work experience person, both adults and schoolkids, went home after their first day realising it wasn't what they had in mind when it seemed like such a good idea at the start. Even seasoned broadcasters have found the switch to news too difficult and switched back again to being a DJ.

It was amongst this bitter-sweet backdrop that I was called to a media conference in late 2002 at the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane. This was to announce a successful surgery on an infant. It was Australian-first surgery on the youngest Aussie to undergo this kind of procedure, highlighting the brilliance of our medical practitioners and the bounds of medical science being pushed further and further.

The usual gathering of media was at the conference. A couple of TV crews, a newspaper journo or two, and a number of radio station news people. We dutifully assembled in front of the desk when the "talent" arrived and were introduced to a young couple, Doug and Samantha Barton, their infant daughter, Brianna and Professor Jonathon Fawcett who led the paediatrics medical team.

Doug and Samantha were both nurses at Katherine Hospital in Australia's Northern Territory. From the introduction they were an average Mr and Mrs from the country, but their world had been sent into an absolute spin a couple of months beforehand. Sam had put their 2 week old daughter to bed one night, as per normal, to wake the next morning and find Brianna had turned an ugly, beyond jaundiced, yellow. Catastrophic liver failure! The biggest organ in the body of this tiny little girl had failed. Overnight!

The liver has many roles, cleansing toxins from the blood, secreting bile which is necessary for digesting fats, and extracting vitamins like iron, B12, A and D from the blood to store for future use. It's the reason why patients with liver illness or cancer have a less than fortunate outlook for long-term survival. And the prognosis for this child was unthinkable unless something could be done.

To find your baby, your first baby, in this situation and especially with the medical knowledge of this young mother, is beyond a parent's worst nightmare.

Brianna, along with her parents, was rushed to Brisbane on an emergency flight for immediate treatment. Problem was she needed a liver transplant if she was to survive, and the chances of a liver, the size of that in a 2 week old baby, becoming available in the short term were realistically non-existent.

Something radical was needed, and quickly.

Incredibly, a suitable adult liver became available at the same time. The result of a road accident, where the victim had made the choice to make their organs available for donation should the unthinkable occur. A dozen other people benefited from this one humanitarian act. Our young parent couple will be forever grateful to the generous person, and their relatives, who gave so much so selflessly.

An average adult liver weighs about 1 and a half to 2 kilos and is about 15 centimetres long, making it impossible to simply transplant it into the tiny space that would be made vacant by the removal of a 2-week old baby's organ. But the liver, apart from pumping about a litre and a half of blood through it every minute, has a trick. It can grow. It's the only organ in the human body that can regrow and so, in Australian-first surgery, the surgeons took a sliver from the donor liver and implanted it in the baby.

The sliver of life they selected was only 10 per cent of the original liver.

The transplant process took hours and hours under the microscope, with the surgeons making minute suturing to attach all the miniscule veins and ducts to the right places.

It was a first. It was unique. It was mind boggling to a non-medical person. And most definitely, it was SENSATIONALLY SUCCESSFUL!!

Three months after the operation we media were introduced to a modest, yet triumphant, surgeon, beamingly delighted parents and a gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed, chubby-cheeked and, most importantly, pink-skinned baby girl who grabbed happily at the collection of microphones in front of her.

Being the afternoon newsman for a radio station whose audience was predominantly young women and mothers, this, I knew, was a story that absolutely fitted the target market.

I interviewed the Professor who spoke about how working on such a tiny specimen made the surgery particularly difficult. And interviewing Doug and Samantha revealed their initial horrors of finding Brianna so sick, of how grateful they were to the hospital, surgeons and staff who helped them, their obvious delight with their bouncing bundle of joy, and how humbled they felt at the generosity of the donor. The opportunity was there for interviewing the baby but she wasn't saying much as she successfully drooled all over the foam wind-sock pop-guard on my microphone.

I left the hospital with an absolute bounce in my step... This was one of those good news stories that, as far as I was concerned, were the reason for doing news.

On the way back to the studio I marvelled at what I'd just been party to. Editing the interview material, and writing the good news stories to go with it, was a buzz. With the predominantly female audience it was obvious to lead the 3pm, 4pm and 5pm bulletins with those stories of this incredible medical feat and the fantastic family result that came from it.

Forget your 9/11's or Gulf Wars, it's these sorts of good news stories that stick in people's heads for all the right reasons... So why leave the radio news industry?

That night I watched the commercial TV news to find, what I thought was, the story of the day buried in the middle of the bulletin behind carnage and destruction. On checking the state's leading newspaper the next day there was little joy in finding the tale of delight lost in the bowels of the daily rag. I don't remember the front page headline picture but it was probably some dastardly horrible thing... certainly not any good news stories.

Just as it was for the cute baby girl, that sliver of life was also, in its small way, instrumental in recharging my life.

A few months later a new career beckoned as a Keynote Speaker, MC, Presentation Skills and Media Skills Coach and Trainer, and Voice Artist and I launched myself at the opportunity.

Sensationally, Brianna is a happy, healthy, young girl and her new liver has grown to the correct size and into the correct position in her body. Her parents hope she'll soon be off immuno-suppressants. The drugs stop the body’s natural rejection of the donor liver and she’s already on the lowest dose possible.

But it hasn't been all plain sailing for the family, and their mettle has been tested more than you think would be a fair share for anyone. Yes, a little brother came along in 2005 to add delight and fun but, at the very same time, Brianna was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in her stomach that quickly grew to weigh 1 and a half kilos. Surgery and chemo, a tough trail for even the toughest adults, must be brutal for a 3 year old child. The duress and stress on Doug and Samantha had them wondering how unfair it was that she survive the liver trauma but possibly not the cancer.

Brianna's a tough cookie!! Four years later there's been no sign of any return of the cancer and another 12 months will see her declared as in full remission.

She started with just a sliver of life but the suggestion is Brianna Barton will power on for her chunk of the world.

Might even be worth going back into news just to cover that story!!

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