Playing for Time Transcript

Playing for Time TranscriptPROGRAM TRANSCRIPT: Monday, 2 October , 2006CAROLINE JONES: Hello, I'm Caroline Jones. When Australian Story first met the brilliant young pianist Aaron McMillan five years ago, it was at the start of the most intense week of his life. He'd just been given a piece of news that changed his outlook on everything and, as our cameras began recording, nobody knew how the story would end. Tonight we revisit that award-winning program to find there are new twists and turns in the Aaron McMillan story, and the drama continues to unfold.AARON MCMILLAN: Just as a game, tell yourself that you could be six weeks from the end of your life right now. You could be. Suddenly, a lot of complicated things become very simple. You can forget about all the things that revolve around you and start focusing on the reason you were given this life in the first place. Find what it is that binds you to this life, because we're given the opportunity to work on that every single day, and then one day, suddenly, it can all be taken away. Twelve days ago, out of the blue, something happened that changed my life. I always prided myself on how healthy I was. I've never, ever had a cold in about 10 years. I had absolutely no symptoms at all. I felt fine. The only thing that I was feeling just in the last couple of weeks was a bit of pressure in my head and then, just by total coincidence, I had a little eye infection. And I thought, oh, no, this is a bit of a pain, 'cause I had a photo shoot coming up and things like this. So that was the one reason why I finally said, "Oh, I better go down to the GP and just get some antibiotic or something for it." She saw the eye problem straightaway and wrote me out a prescription, and off I went.For complete transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2006/s1754700.htm