Clown doctors saving lives – no evil clowns here!
Clowns are getting a bad rap, but one girl won’t hear of it
‘It can be so scary in hospital but the clowns took away a lot of pain’
Sometimes a visit from the clown doctors was the only time Holly’s parents Kim and Ben would see their very sick daughter smile during her two-year battle with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
While the “clown purge” craze has swept the globe and dressed-up delinquents carry weapons and threaten violence, ask a kid like Holly and they’ll tell you straight: not all clowns are creepy – some even save lives.
“Holly would be lying there, feeling awful, then the clown doctors would visit and she’d smile and perk up,” recalls Kim.
For 20 years, Australian charity The Humour Foundation has been sending clowns into hospitals under the belief that humour is the best medicine. With their red noses and bright garb, the clown doctors perform their “clown rounds” in hospitals across Australia to distract children from illness with slapstick and fun.
Holly was diagnosed with leukaemia just two weeks before her seventh birthday on May 27, 2014. She was pale, lethargic and had been complaining of sore legs, so Kim took her to the GP.
Three hours and a blood test later, the Adelaide family stood in front of an oncologist: Holly had more than 90 per cent leukaemia cells in her bone marrow.
Significant pain
“It was treatment now, or not much time,” says Kim, 40. “They sat down with her and said, ‘Holly, you’ve got bad weeds in your blood, and the weeds are growing really fast. You have cancer.
“‘We’re going to kill the weeds with a weed killer, but sometimes the weed killer kills the bad things and sometimes it kills the good cells, so you won’t feel very well until the flowers grow again.’”
Chemotherapy began straight away and made her feel nauseous and incredibly weak. Her hair fell out in clumps and for a time she could barely walk.
“If she dropped something and went to pick it up, she couldn’t get back up. That was really hard to see,” says Kim.
Holly was always brave but she hated having general anaesthetics, which were required for bone marrow biopsies and lumbar punctures when chemotherapy was fed into her spine. Luckily, the clowns always came to her rescue.
“They’d walk her down to the operating theatre, blowing bubbles and making jokes to distract her,” says Kim. “They were a familiar face in a scary environment.”
Other times they’d sprinkle chicken salt over Holly because “chicken salt makes everything better!” They’d perform “catscans” with a toy cat and ask if they could test her “funny bone”. They knew Holly by name and would seek her out.
One day, Holly was begging to go home. She felt so sick and didn’t want to be in hospital. “I just want to hide!” she told Kim. So the clown doctors arrived and wrapped Holly’s head in toilet paper so she could “hide” for a while.
Learning to smile again
“It made a huge difference to all of us. It was nice to have a break as a parent, to see your child have fun, because they’re always so miserable. The clown doctors break up the tension,” says Kim.
More than entertainment, the clowns became Holly’s mates. She was often too sick to play with other kids, and a couple of her friends passed away while she was there. But the clowns were never too sick to play with her.
These days, Holly, now nine, is in remission and can be found playing at the park or racing around with friends. She’s not quite back to her old self, but she hasn’t forgotten the clown doctors who made her giggle through her fight for life.
“These sick kids are living their own horror story, so to have the clowns relieve that is really nice,” says Kim. “It can be so scary in hospital but the clowns took away a lot of pain.”