Clown doctor Lou Pollard says she often spends a little time geeing herself up in the car before she walks into a hospital to perform for sick kids. Many of the clown doctors she knows have similar rituals.
"We're in people's lives at a particularly vulnerable time," Pollard says. "Sometimes it's the worst week of their life and we're there trying to make everyone laugh, so it's really bitter-sweet."
Pollard is a clown doctor team co-ordinator for the Humour Foundation, an Australian charity dedicated to promoting the health benefits of humour. She organises a team of clown doctors to cover appointments across three hospitals and herself performs under the name Dr Quack.
Being a clown doctor means a lot more than just blowing up balloons for kids, she stresses.
"Some people think we're party clowns, rather than people who are highly sensitive to the hospital environment and trained to deal with difficult situations."
Pollard encounters a variety of misconceptions about what she does.
"We've been in hospital emergency departments and people have said all these medical things to us and we've just looked at them blankly.
"People do presume that we are all doctors - it comes from the Patch Adams thing - so we often have to dispel that myth."
Pollard has a colourful CV. She is also an accomplished writer, actor, stand-up comedian and public speaker (and the daughter of late journalist/writer Jack Pollard).
She says that being a clown doctor has had a positive influence on her perspective about her overall working life.
"When you've gone to a funeral dressed as a clown, because the child said they want you at their funeral dressed like that, you don't care about little things any more.
"When you've been in the room with a family facing a life-or-death situation, all the unimportant stuff falls away."
Clown doctors have gained a firm place in major Australian hospitals over the past 15 years. Pollard, who began working for the Humour Foundation in 2006, says she intends to reduce her workload in hospitals in the next few years, so she can focus more on the speaking and writing engagements she undertakes on behalf of the foundation.
"I think emotionally it will be good for me to not be in the hospital every week," she says, "but I'll obviously still always do the work and stay connected.
"People stay clown doctors for many years. It's not a job people quit, because it's so emotionally rewarding."
