D. Hinch - A Human Deadline: A Story of Life, Death, Hope and House Arrest

H ow could it happen with the most important phone call of my life? How could it happen when for months we had discussed THE CALL in capital letters? That long-awaited phone call from the Liver Transplant Unit at the Austin Hospital to tell me that a life-saving donor organ was suddenly available and to get my butt to hospital as fast as possible for a transplant.

Chanel had dreamed about it. We had endlessly discussed it. And when we werent talking about it, it hung there like an unspoken word. Every night for months my wife would glance at her clock around 11 p.m. and think, Is this the night?

It had happened, just after 11 p.m., several months earlier in what turned out to be the dummy run, and that time The Call part of the plan had worked like clockwork. I was at home. I got The Call, breathlessly called Chanel, and off to the Austin we went.

But on the night, Tuesday, July 5, 2011, the failsafe system failed. Through no fault of the LTU donorpatient co-ordination team, the priority call to me failed. The back-up system call to Chanel failed. Hinch, it seemed, had left the building. The third line of defence made it with only seconds to spare. My 3AW producer and friend Shannon Reid was just about to board a Spencer Street tram on a wet and windy night. Once on the tram, in the city, on a dirty night, who knows if she would have heard her phone ringing?

Ironically, we had talked about missed calls before and I had even written about them. In a blog on My Liver, My Life in December 2010, I wrote about an experience with a temporary mobile phone after having dropped my iPhone down the toilet two nights before Christmas. There was the obvious I dont remember eating that joke before an emergency dash to Optus for a replacement because, cognisant of The Call, I couldnt be without a phone for a minute. The temporary phone had a keypad so small and numbers so Lilliputian that it seemed like a giveaway gimmick for the dreadful new Gullivers Travels movie.

We were on my balcony one day when the phone rang. It was on the kitchen bench and, although I got there and reached it while it was still ringing, the caller had gone by the time I found the tiny green answer button. As I walked back outside, the thought hit me: What if it was the Austin? What if the Liver Transplant Unit co-ordinator was calling me to tell me a suitable donor organ had been offered and I was next on The List? What if I was meant to grab the now permanently packed bag in my wardrobe containing pyjamas, toiletries and the Love Bear that families of cancer victims had knitted for me, and race to Heidelberg? I knew Chanel was having the same thoughts. We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, knowing that if that were the case her phone would ring next as the second number on my contact list.

That time it didnt.

We resolved that from then on the phone stayed with me 24/7. In restaurants it would sit on the table. On our regular Saturday night date at Rockpool, Chanel would go through the ritual.

Wheres your phone?

Its in my pocket. Its on Vibrate. I wont miss a call.

Put it on the table.

And with a medical excuse for looking like a wanker, I would. Late at night was no problem. At night, I always have my mobile switched on and next to my bedthats the journo in me. I always answer nocturnal calls. It could be Harold Holt.

We also didnt know, because we had never asked, what all the procedures were on a donor alert night. If none of my numbers or back-ups was answering how long did we have before they decided to zero in on somebody else? Somebody more diligent and receptive. Or did they have several potential recipients on the go at the same time?

One morning during the months of waiting a call came from the Austin that did get through. My hopes rose instantly as a senior executive said excitedly, Derryn, great news from the Austin and I wanted you to hear it first.

It was great news for cancer patients but not this cancer patient. Word had just come through that after some strong media campaigning, including by yours truly, the new Baillieu government had decided to fund the $70 million shortfall promised during the election by then Premier John Brumby to complete the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre at the Austin, and Olivia wants to come on your program and talk about it.

So what went wrong on the night of July 5, 2011 and how close did I come to missing out on the greatest gift a person can ever be given?

The origins of an answer to that question lie in an event 23 years earlier when I held a newborn, very premature baby not much bigger than my hand. His name was Michael William James, the first-born child of Darren and Kathy James. Darren, son of Melbourne radio veteran Peter James, had been my panel operator when I first joined 3AW and, as my soundman, had toted a hefty Nagra tape recorder on many of my overseas assignments. Like the award-winning first-ever live broadcast to the west from Beijing, and trips to India, famine-stricken Africa, the United States and Europe.

By 2011, Michaelthe third generation James to work at 3AWwas working on the Breakfast program and about to embark on the traditional Great Aussie Overseas Adventure. On the night of 5 July he was having farewell drinks at a pub not far from our offices at Media House, opposite Melbournes Spencer Street Station. Id just finished the Drive program, which had involved a torrid segment on the genocide in Sri Lanka in the final days of the Tamil civil war. Gruesome, graphic footage had been aired on Four Corners the night before and I was puzzled and angry about why it hadnt stirred Australians the way the cruelty to live export cattle had in another Four Corners expos a few weeks earlier. I was also feeling tired.

During our post-program wind-down, which sometimes included a mini post-mortem, I remember saying to Shannon Reid, Is tonight the night there are drinks for Michael James at the Frog and Toad? I went there so rarely after work that I could never remember the real name of the Saint & Rogue. As a non-drinker for the past five years, after-work drinksonce a lengthy nightly ritualno longer held much allure. Apart from the fact that you can only drink so much lemon, lime and bitters after a Virgin Mary, I had also discovered a surprising turn-off in bars: the noise. But because it was for Michael, a popular youngster at the radio station, Shannon and I decided to make an appearance. Prophetically, she said, I cant stay long. I have an appointment.

So thats where I was when I circuitously got The Call. And thats why, when the transplant story broke, the headlines said: Hinch Gets Liver News at the Pub. Maybe I was being overly sensitive or maybe I was presciently anticipating some of the opposition I would encounter to a former heavy drinker even being considered for a transplant, but Ill admit I was embarrassed that The Call had come through at the boozer. It sounded like it was a regular hangout. Ten or twenty years ago it would have been, but that night was a fluke.

There were more flukes and close calls and failed communications in store. The transplant co-ordinators knew before I got off air at 6 p.m. that night that a suitable donor liver had been found and my transplant operation had been given the green light. They knew exactly where I was because several were regular listeners. They held off contacting me because if I had taken an urgent call during a commercial break I might have let something slip on air or I would have abruptly gone off air and the secret would have been out. I had joked in the past that I hoped I got The Call while doing my program. Great live radio! But we were all aware of the protocols involved and the need to preserve the distance and muddy any link between donor and recipient.