CHOC Full of Hope, Healing

There’s a moment in an upcoming episode of the Learning Channel’s four-part series on Children’s Hospital of Orange County in which pediatric neurosurgeon Michael Muhonen performs a magic trick. His audience: a little girl, who had undergone the surgical implantation of an electronic device that will prevent her from having seizures.

Muhonen, CHOC’s director of neurosurgery, has discovered that doing magic tricks is a way to break the ice and keep young patients’ minds off any anxiety they have in meeting with a doctor.

“They expect you to give them pain, and you give them something to smile about,” he explains, in voice-over, after delighting the girl and her brother and sister with a trick in which he sticks a pen through a $10 bill, blows on it, and then produces a whole bill.

For producer-director Paul Buller, whose camera crew shadowed the staff and patients at CHOC over a three-month period last year, Muhonen’s magic tricks sum up the child-friendly atmosphere at the children’s hospital in Orange.

“Dr. Muhonen has that special method at his disposal, but the staff in general are always looking for ways to make the experience child-friendly, and it’s not forced. It’s just very natural,” Buller says.

“Children’s Hospital of Orange County” is a series of four hourlong documentaries. The first two episodes--”First Breath,” a look at the neonatal intensive care unit, and “Broken Hearts,” which highlights heart surgery and the pediatric intensive-care unit--aired in August. They will be repeated Dec. 11.

The final two episodes, airing back-to-back, premiere on TLC tonight. Episode three, “A Kind of Magic,” focuses on four surgical cases; and episode four, “Kids Vs. Cancer,” involves three young patients.

At CHOC, the program is a hit. The TLC series had an in-house “world premiere” there in August for staff members and the families who appear in it.

The hospital has received phone calls and e-mails from parents around the country who saw a case in the first two episodes that’s similar to their own children’s situations and are looking for more information or, in some instances, want to meet with CHOC physicians.

The series was filmed by Buller’s Redondo Beach-based documentary film company, which has produced a dozen documentaries for the Learning Channel, including the recent “Hollywood Cops,” a behind-the-scenes look at the LAPD’s Hollywood Division.

The British-born Buller, who came up with the idea for a series of documentaries that would showcase the latest medical technology and the human element of a children’s hospital, said he had a choice between Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

“Once we got to know everyone and see the operation [at CHOC] . . . I felt it was the one we had to do,” Buller said. He was impressed with the atmosphere and the fact that so many families remain involved with CHOC by helping with fund-raising and volunteering.

Buller said it wasn’t difficult getting patients’ families to participate.

“Once they got the idea that part of what we were doing was to demystify the mysteries of a children’s hospital experience so other families can have an idea of what they’re up against, then the families came aboard very quickly,” he said.

That was the case with Robert and Jill Frey of Fountain Valley.

Their then 3-month-old son David had been diagnosed with a rare condition in which the bones of the skull close prematurely and prevent the brain from growing normally. David, who will be seen in the upcoming third episode, underwent a two-hour operation in which Muhonen removed the skull bones that had closed and put the pieces back together like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Paul asked us to allow it to be filmed so they could present it to other parents to allay some of their fears,” Robert Frey said. “This is going to be shown nationwide, and if other parents have this condition in their children, it’s good to know that it can be corrected.”

The documentary crew consisted of a cameraman, a sound man, a couple of production associates and Buller, who carried a hand-held digital camera at all times. “We operated like a news crew. We’re very fast and low-key,” he said.

Initially, Buller said, “the biggest challenge is gaining everybody’s trust, and once you’ve gained that it’s to remain inconspicuous, to truly become that fly on the wall. It’s not an easy thing having a camera follow you everywhere.”

When filming in a hospital, he said, “you have to be constantly aware of a family’s vulnerability of being in that situation. So in that respect, you’re always conscious of obviously not filming people that don’t want to be filmed or being ahead of the camera and explaining to families what you’re trying to achieve with your program.”

And once given the go-ahead, he said, “you have the responsibility to hang in there through thick and thin.”

At the end of three months, Buller and his crew had 250 hours of videotape, having filmed dozens of patients and their families. In the end, however, only 16 families appear in the four programs.

“When I go into these situations, I basically just make sure we keep rolling,” Buller said. “We will take on board anything and everything because the smallest introduction can lead to the biggest event, and you have to follow the stuff through all the time. The unfortunate thing is not everybody can end up in the final program.”

After nearly eight months of editing, the four documentaries were screened at CHOC for the hospital staff and the families.

Robert Frey had to work that night, but his wife attended the screening, along with David, by then a rambunctious 14-month-old who kept his mother busy chasing after him up and down the aisles, laughing, during his operation sequence.

Jill Frey said she didn’t really want to watch the operation, which required that David’s scalp be peeled from his skull.

“Once I saw David with his eyes taped and they were giving him the anesthesia, I had to remove myself from being his mom if I wanted to watch the rest of it,” she said. “I started getting emotional, going, ‘Oh my God.’ Then, after that, it was OK.”

A videotape of the episode featuring David has been sitting on the couple’s VCR since the screening, but Robert Frey said he’s in no hurry to watch it. It’s not a matter of squeamishness, however.

Says Frey with a laugh: “I just don’t want to see myself on television.”

“A Kind of Magic” and “Kids Vs. Cancer” air on TLC at 9 and 10 p.m., respectively, tonight.