Hello and welcome to the Gifted Life podcast where we have conversations about Oregon, Tissue and I Donation. I'm Lori Steele. I'm Joey Boudreau. And I'm Sally Gentry.
And we are celebrating, right? Yeah, Lori, I Donation Month, new name, new month, but still a wonderful celebration. And we'll also hear about what the Batmer-Guy Bank is doing to facilitate communication between donor families and recipients. So this month's theme is power of you.
We'll talk about that and much more here. On this episode of The Gifted Life, our ask of you is to help spread the word. Absolutely. Find us, rate, subscribe to us.
You can find us on Apple Podcast, Google Play or whatever your favorite podcast app might be. And maybe you're on social media. I know Sally is because she shares everything that we do, which I love, right? So they get to life podcasts if you're on Facebook.
Maybe you're on Twitter, Instagram, it's at Gifted Life Pod, not hard to find guys. Help us spread the word to make life happen. Let's get to it. Here on the Gifted Life, we are excited to introduce you to one of our longtime partners, just sweet lady who just wants to make a difference out in the community.
Her name is Julia Wallace. Hey, Miss Julia. Hi, to be with you all. Thanks for joining us.
Julia is with the Baton Rouge Eye Bank. And we are talking about Eye Donation Month. When is that, Julia? Eye Donation Month is now going to be celebrated in November.
And we are very excited because we are wanting to honor every part of Eye Banking and a transplantation, including transplant surgeons, the recipients, donors themselves, their families who give the gift. We're really excited to do this. So walk me through, I kind of remember it not being in November. And then I thought it was a different name, like National Eye Donation, something.
So walk me through like the changes and why we are where we are today. Yes, we used to be National Eye Donor Month in March and everyone wanted to get together to reimagine it and to include more people in the celebration for mode awareness of eye donation. So we want to acknowledge all of the supporting parts that go along with the donation and transplantation process, because there are so many moving parts as y'all know when a donor is involved. It's a transplanting surgeon.
It's a nurse who's calling the referral. It's the funeral home. We want to make sure that everybody on the team impacts this has on millions of people in the US and locally, because a lot of US tissue that has donated affects people in other countries. And it's wonderful.
And we wanted to make sure that we broadcast that. And you talk about so many people who are touched through Eye Donation. I can tell you personally being one of the administrators on call for LOPA, we get quite a bit of questions, even from our staff and then of course I get from some community of things that they could be ruled out. They feel like, well, I don't know if I should be an eye donor because I can't see or wear glasses.
What are the most common myths that you hear that people have about maybe not being donors when really in fact that's not the case? A lot of people tend to preclude themselves from being donors because they wear glasses or they have tatter racks or they might even be legally blind. But actually what's transplanted is the cornea, the clear covering on the phone of your eye. Not the colorful iris that you see when you look at somebody is actually just a clear covering.
It looks very much like a contact lens. And that's actually the portion that's transplanted. I think a lot of people are fearful of not only they don't have healthy eyes, but that when we do the recovery that it might configure them in some way and it doesn't. Right.
So that is one of the other questions we get of course from a lot of families. They still want to have an open casket funeral especially here in Louisiana. But does that really impact whether someone can have an open casket versus closed casket? No, not at all.
We make every effort to preserve that person's appearance. And we actually put in a prosthetic that keeps the shape of the eye itself. Even if we were to take the whole globe, we put in that process and maintain that shape. And I would be shy and not put in the world here as they have in the past.
And we're out in the community. I know Julia sometimes we partner out there in the community and a lot of the high schoolers talk about a movie where someone got a transplant in their eyes changed color. So I'm glad you kind of touched on that. But it's all about dispelling those myths, putting facts out there.
And that's kind of what we do. There's some big changes in the eye donation world which are positive, especially in Sally's view. I understand that you're making a lot of changes now with the communication process among families recipients sharing their stories. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
Sharing donor family stories and donor stories and what recipient stories is the most exciting part of my job because I feel it's the most impactful thing that we can do when somebody is registering to be an ordinary and high-end tissue donor. I feel that those stories really carry a lot of weight. And it's a wonderful thing to be able to hear the hope that it has given that donor family and hope that it gave the recipient change their light. And for us to be able to highlight that and to share those stories and the photos of donors and recipients, it's such a human touch.
And when people think about that, I want them to see the faces. And I think that's really important to me as an individual and a development director to push that. And in the office, we are trying to work with a local photographer to realize this project of sharing donor family stories and use photographs. We're trying to be able to send something to those donor families at the end of the year.
So each year what we'll want to do is reach out to those donor families to share stories about their loved one and what donations have meant to their life, the same with recipients. What was the impact that transplant had on their quality of life and to be able to connect the two would be just wonderful and so excited. And you know what we found, Julia, is for people to be able to share their stories among one another has made all the difference in the world and how their perception of donation is, whether it's the donor family or the recipient. And you know, almost all the time and I know that you're very familiar with this, but they're just so grateful to hear what another's doing.
Yeah, and you know, those experiences, whether it's the inside or the donor family side, it's on foot. You feel like you're the only one going through that. And here's so many other stories to share those moments with someone else and know that you are not loading your grief and there's so much good that happens, so much hope. I just feel like it really hits home.
I think it's wonderful to have a platform for that. I think they picked the perfect person for a development director over the iPad. Exactly. And we were about the same area there.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, we know November is one of the busiest months for you guys because it is eye donation month. So let's talk about some of the activities that happened over the month when you honor those donors that you just spoke about. Yes, we have our annual Thanksgiving service for life and site. We do each year and to explain a little bit about what it is, the candle lighting service for donor families and recipients to come together in one place honoring those that have given the gift of sight and the gift of life.
And so what they do is like a candle and honors their loved ones that was the donor in those passed away and the recipient's wife, a candle and honor of the person that gave them sight and gave them life. And it's just a beautiful moment to take that time to acknowledge donation when it's meant to them. And a lot of other I think have the same type of service. It was kind of a natural fit that we would celebrate during November, you know, pretty much the month of Thanksgiving.
Yes, and it is a beautiful service again this year. So we appreciate you guys including Alopa staff in that as well. I just want to ask, how did you end up doing what it is that you do? Obviously there's a passion behind what you do and when you got in the community obviously we can see it.
So I guess tell us your trek and how you ended up right where you're supposed to be. Well, I wanted to be a Labrador farmer, but that wasn't that. It was a day of time. Another career.
But I was actually major at doing and I always wanted to be in the healthcare field, but I wasn't quite sure what capacity. So I worked for an ophthalmic surgery and I was on the business side for quite a while, almost over seven years and job and I think I opened up. And you know, we would always be on the other side of the transplant process surgery itself. So it was really neat to see all the tissue arrive and know somebody was going to get their site back and work that job.
I think that's why I thought this is it. This is where I can put my field to you five years later. Oh gosh, it could be six now. I'm still hearing.
I just love it. There are always new things to do and improvements you can make and promoting awareness is just a wonderful thing. And the coordinators, if you wear many hats that are, I think, you know, when you're up at three in one with a greetings family and you're able to be involved in every fact of that process, you realize just how amazing and precious and gifted it is. Well, it might not seem like that at the moment.
Seeing it all the way through is really what motivates me. Nice. All right, Julia, if people want to learn more, maybe they're in your area and they want to volunteer. They want to help you guys out.
Where would you send them? Absolutely. I would love that. You could visit our Facebook page, Baton Rouge Regional, I think, where we post the things, your stories and human beings.
We hope to have our free on website at iBankBR.org. All right. Miss Julia, while us at the Baton Rouge iBank, we appreciate the time and thanks for what you do. Thanks, Julia.
Thanks for having me. You're on the get-to-life war learning to do, right? Yep. And of course, as always, we've got our resident expert on mental health, Sally Gentry.
What you got for today? Hey, how are y'all? Look, I'm just thrilled that you think that I am, you know, that much. Wow.
I don't know what to say about it earlier. I was, no. Okay. Yeah.
I just kind of make it all this up as I go. Okay. I talk about support groups. Okay.
And, you know, a lot of times people get the idea that, well, I don't know if I want to go to a support group or not because I don't have to talk about all my stuff and I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure. Yeah. I'm not sure that's what I want to do.
And most of the time when you hear support group, generally people go, oh, isn't that something that, you know, like people that have a problem go to? Well, you know, not necessarily because we don't like to think that people who are going through the grieving process is experiencing, you know, something that is just, it's not a problem. It is just part of living life. It's part of what happens for each and every one of us when someone that we love dies.
And we found over time through the research, but also through just experiential or through people participating that support groups can really, really be beneficial and help folks recognize that they're not alone. There are others. They can hear other stories. And sometimes when we hear another story like that, it's like, oh my gosh, I thought it was just me.
I didn't realize somebody else was going through the same thing. But then you really have a chance to express your feelings because your support groups are not judgmentally based. You're not going to have people go, oh, well, it's not how I felt or why do you feel that way? And so, I think that's what happens up the door for really just letting yourself have that time to share of here's how I feel.
And, you know, I've talked to my family. I've talked to my friends. And now it seems like they just don't want me to talk about this anymore. So a support group is really a safe place to talk about your feelings.
And also you can get a lot of really good, helpful information, you know, support groups can offer just practical tips or, you know, resources for dealing with what's going on with what whatever it is that you would like assistance with. And I think too, that it does help with social skills because, you know, it's very difficult for all of us, I think, or most of us, let me put it that way, to discuss how we think or feel about dying. It's just something that we generally do not talk about on a regular basis. And so to be able to have maybe a few little tips about how you can talk about it can be very, very helpful for people.
Also, it can be a way to gain hope. Look and see what's happened for someone else. And I realize, and I think I'm going to throw this also into this, that in our family services program, we realized when we would hear people say, I just, it's hopeless. I just can't do anything else anymore.
Because they would talk to different individuals who had been through similar situations in the grief process. They actually then found that there was some hope for them because they could see there was something more they would find over time and that's very difficult for many of us at time issue. But also support groups can help in reducing stress. I mean, you know, when you work through various issues or concerns, it's just really common that you start noticing that, you know, well, I'm not quite as stressed as what I previously was because you are identifying it, you're working through it.
And you know, as we've talked about on multiple times, and I think you all have shared with folks not only within the clinical background, but in the community, that there's just no way you can get around grief. There will be some way that you're going to have to work your way through it to be able to come with some sort of a little bit more peaceful solution. And that gives you an increased self understanding of where you are, what are your challenges, what's your strategy going to be that would help you work best toward whatever goal you may have of coming to more of an acceptance of the death of your loved one. And not only can it help you, but then you in turn are helping others.
And that's really a win-win-win situation for us because if I can help you understand something a little better or have little different thought about something and you go, you know what, that did work. Let me tell you what I did and how it worked for me. Then we both really walk away and it can be multiple people now, but we can say each individual can walk away going, you know what, that was really beneficial for me to have the ability to help you and you help me. I mean, I can't think of much else more in life that we'd really want than just to be able to give and to give back.
As you were talking, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just from my perspective and then talking to someone with similar struggles, I mean it's a relief like, oh, not the only one, right? And so we start anew, tomorrow's a new day. I like that.
Maybe you have a topic you want Sally to cover or maybe you want her to talk a little bit more about that info at the Gifted Life. And as we do in every episode of the Gifted Life, we like to honor a hero. Today's hero is Alexis Moliere. And we learn about Alexis from her family.
Alexis was always full of life. She was loved by everyone that knew her. She had an infectious smile that would light up anyone's day. Her passion for dance was beyond measure.
She loved chasing sunsets to get the perfect pictures. She had a large circle of friends that will never forget her and the impact she made on their lives. She was always on the go and now I know why. She had lots to do and plenty lives to touch in her short 14 years of life on Earth.
We miss her every day but have some comfort in knowing that someone is seeing the world and sunsets through her eyes. Also through organ donation, she saved three lives. She is my hero. And now we pause to say thank you to Alexis for the gift of life.
Our question and answer segment today, how can someone have cancer and still donate their cornias? Joe, I'll kick that for you. Well, Laurie, as Julia mentioned earlier, there are many types of cancer that people can have and still become eye donors, unlike many times with organ and tissue. And a big part of that reason is because the cornea is avascular and it doesn't receive blood supply.
It receives its oxygen directly from the atmosphere. So it's very different from a lot of other tissues. And because of this, of course, because it's got no blood supply, in most cases, nullifies the potential for cancer cells. Thanks, Joey.
You know, we want you all to know that your story or question is very important to us. And we'd like for you to give us a call. 504-648-3477. Or you can email us at info at thegiftedlife.org.
Another episode of the gifted life podcast in the books. And we're here to believe guys, almost to 100 episodes, right? Wow, yeah. I wonder if we surveyed the group, do we like each other more now?
Then we did then. What do you think? Well, I think we find each other much more amusing. Yes.
That's true. Thank you to the Baton Rouge Eye Bank and Eye Banks across the country for highlighting all aspects of donation and honoring those donors. And maybe if we've inspired you today, we'd like for you to go to richterme.org. Say yes today, make life happen.
We hope you go out and do something that you don't normally do to help us make life happen. Thanks for listening. This is a production of the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency or LOPA. The gifted life is hosted by Lori Steele, Joey Buudro, and Sally Gendry, our executive producer is Kirsten Hines, producer ishiland Caraway, and we are recorded, engineered, and mixed in our Covington, Louisiana studio by Troy Perez.