RACHEL'S COLUMNS

These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age

No apt metaphor for life's most precious hour
19th November 2004

There are not many places you go to and hope that you'll never have to return to again. Sure, there was the cottage I rented for a romantic weekend, where my date – who had a vast knowledge of botany – could actually name the various lichen growing in the shower recess. But generally, I'm happy to give most places a second visit – not the Alfred Hospital's Emergency and Trauma Centre. On Tuesday, Deborah Conway and I were given a tour of the Trauma Centre because we're both performing tonight at The Golden Hour Ball, an annual event that raises money to purchase highly specialized equipment for the treatment of burns and trauma patients.

I'm certain we were invited on a Tuesday because Tuesdays are traditionally the quietest days for traumas at The Alfred. Deborah alerted us pretty quickly to the fact that she may get queasy at the site of blood. I, on the other hand, am fine with bodily fluids – it's muffins that make my stomach turn – especially blueberry muffins, they're so wrong. When I suggested to our guide Leora that muffins, in fact any items purchased in a bakery, are potentially traumatic she explained that a trauma is an inflicted) injury – like falling over, getting burnt, shot or thrown into a moat bubbling with real estate agents.

Jason McCartney and his wife Nerissa came along too – this is where Jason was brought after the Bali bombing and where with the support of the expert staff he came good and found the strength and resilience to not only bounce back but to continue regularly visiting and motivating patients facing their own battles.

Now, I'm the sort of person who'd prefer to treat any trauma with Belgian chocolates or a soak in a fragrant bath of Bergamot and patchouli in preference to having rubber tubing poking out of my body parts. But there I was, surrounded by millions of dollars of tubing, CT Scanners, operating lights, fresh packs of sterile equipment, IV fluids ready to go and a bunch of specialist nurses whose smiles could resuscitate a mummy.

I stood in the epicentre of Australia's busiest trauma service and hoped that I would never have to come back – especially in one of those hideous hospital gowns that, like Medicare, never quite cover your backside! But should I ever experience any trauma – apart from my weekly conversations with my mother –please bring me back here as speedily as you can say ABC – airway, breathing and circulation – the first things to be checked when a patient arrives at this facility.

With the weekend ahead, the crew at the Trauma Centre know to expect – anything! One minute they can be filling out paperwork, the next they can be on the helipad receiving a critically injured patient. Just imagining the speed at which the trauma staff have to collect details on the patient and check injuries and vital signs had me gasping for oxygen. Trauma is the biggest killer of young people in Australia and this facility sees more patients than any other. I felt like I was on the set of E.R. except here the nurses have big hearts rather than big hair.

I have a special relationship with my organs. I imagine them to be just like a back-stage crew and when we're all working in synergy we put on a pretty good show. My brain is the executive producer – it runs the show from head office. But it's useless without a good director – my heart, which pumps the blood and fosters love and other irrational motives. The liver is my stage manager – it secretes bile and cleans up when I get a bit messy. I better stop this metaphor right now before I'm banned from every theatre in town.

Our bodies are truly miraculous, when a serious trauma occurs there's a window of opportunity for the victim that lasts for about 60 minutes. It's a critical period when the body goes into survival mode and for a limited time, compensates for the trauma it has experienced. If emergency treatment can begin right away, it could mean the difference between life and death. This vital period is called "The Golden Hour" – that's a one-hour show I'd want to be doing at The Alfred Trauma Centre.