Keeping Australia Alive

The Australian health system in one snapshot. From the thin blue line on the pregnancy test to the flat line on the ECG, this episode examines the role of our health system in our lives from cradle to grave.

With a health system as vast as Australia's, a postcode can mean the difference between life and death. Archie Lauriston places the lives of both his wife AND daughter into the hands of the medicos for complex surgery.

What impact can we have on our own outcomes? In this episode we meet mother of four Annie and her husband Gerry from Perth as they face the toughest day of their lives. Annie has aggressive breast cancer in one breast, but she has made the decision to have both her breasts removed to give herself the best chance of living cancer-free. Ron Ryan from Daylesford Victoria takes his mum Jane for some tests to discover why she’s been having problems with her memory. Together they hear the ‘scary words’ that make up Jane’s diagnosis. In the neonatal ward where extremely premature babies fight for life, a young mother holds her eight day old newborn for the very first time. Sixty four year old Larry McCarthur is obese… a problem affecting nearly one third of all adult Australians. Larry weighs more than 160 kilos. He suffers severe osteoarthritis in his knees and can barely walk 20 steps. Today he hopes that will change when he undergoes a gastric sleeve operation. The surgery will reduce the size of his stomach to a little wider than a garden hose.

Fifty three year old Danny Hudswell has Parkinson’s disease. The uncontrollable tremors limit his day to day life to the extent he can’t even drink a cup of tea. Surgeons perform an awake craniotomy adjusting the signals of the brain to try to control his symptoms. In Brisbane, nine month old Ariana has a hole in her heart that must be repaired. Her mother and father face a very difficult day, made much harder when Mum’s health complication forces her to seek treatment at a nearby emergency hospital. Boigu is the most northern island in the Torres Straits and is the outer limit of our health system. This is frontier medicine, still dealing with illnesses like tuberculosis and leprosy. A machete injury comes in from Papua New Guinea and a young girl arrives with mysterious pain and swelling in both knees. A patient is rushed to emergency in Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital suffering severe internal burns after an electrical accident at work. The medical team work urgently to control his pain and save his leg.

Professor Roy Kimble, Head of the Paediatric unit at Lady Cilento Children’s hospital in Brisbane, takes us on a day’s rounds. He treats UN refugee 15 year old Masoumeh who sustained serious burns in a fire that killed her father and brother. She dreams of driving a car but Dr Kimble needs to open out her burned hands before she can hold the steering wheel. He also operates on Jada, a three year old who was born with her internal organs outside the abdomen, and on Caleb who was seriously burnt in a fire at home. Caleb has been through 50 hours of operations, and has more surgery to come. We meet Nick and Carly in Canberra who are wrestling with the decision of whether to undergo genetic testing for their second child. Their first child Dash has cystic fibrosis and they have a 25% chance of their next baby inheriting the disease if conceived naturally. In Perth, we meet Adam. At 35 he is an ‘old man’ in the cystic fibrosis world. With his lung function reduced to 20% he now needs a lung transplant. Louise Baker is a rural generalist in Cowra. A cancer survivor herself, her aim is to practice safe medicine in her rural community helping people stay close to family while receiving treatment. She’s been working in Cowra for more than 30 years, and is now delivering the babies of the babies she delivered years ago. And do gentlemen have vasectomies – taking one for the team?

From seizures to footy falls, to a motor vehicle accident victim who is rushed to Bendigo emergency fighting for life, this episode looks at the front lines of our medical system. Dr Antony Di Dio in Canberra takes us through a day in the life of a suburban GP. He is one of the 30,000 general practitioners in the country and he sees on average 30 patients a day, in line with the national average. A desperate methamphetamine addict presents to emergency for treatment after attempting to commit suicide. What options are there for him when he says he wants help? In the CALD maternity unit of Melbourne’s Sunshine Hospital more than 5200 babies are born each year. Some births are routine, others become life-threatening emergencies. New Zealand couple Kahoo and Aaron are expecting their fifth baby. They are very anxious after their last child died soon after birth. And, prostate cancer. It is the most common cancer found in men – 47 Australians will be diagnosed every day and nine will die. In this episode we see Peter undergoing state of the art robotic surgery to remove his prostate.

Kerrie needs bypass surgery; Jack from Perth is half way through his transition from male to female; in a world first clinical trial, Adam prepares himself for the results of his melanoma scans.