Operation Impact

Hello, and welcome to the Gifted Life Podcast, where we have conversations about organ, tissue, and eye donation, and transplantation. You can always find us at thegiftedlife.org. I'm Roy Steele. I'm Joey Boudreau.

I'm Sarah Blaymore. And coming up on the Gifted Life today, lots to get to. Yes, we do. One recipient is working hard on his masters while at the same time finding purpose in spreading donation, awareness to others.

And we're going to talk about what to do if you're despair, just won't go away. All right, all that and more right here, the Gifted Life. Hang on tight. Here on the Get to Life podcast, we are all excited.

Woo-hoo! Okay, one's there and you're excited. Yeah. I'm going to go to the Gifted Life podcast and through this medium where we talk about donation and education, we were connected to a wonderful young man doing wonderful things in the world of donations.

So we're going to be speaking to William Porter. Hey, William. How's it going? Now, William actually worked with LOBA and other organizations to make life happen.

But William, before we get to that, let's talk about your history as a recipient. Can you kind of walk us through what led you to be a recipient and how you're doing today? Absolutely. Well, first of all, I want to start off by saying thank you for the opportunity.

It really is a pleasure to be on. I guess my transplant journey really started shortly after I was born. Originally, everything was going well, but started to get really sick and very frequently and we didn't really know exactly what was going on. And so after some pretty frequent trips to my family pediatrician, I was ultimately referred to Children's Health Care at Atlanta at Egleston.

And when I got to Children's Health Care at Atlanta, doctors got it right on it on trying to figure out what was going on with me. An open liver biopsy was conducted to try to see kind of what was going on, whether it was alladil syndrome, iliaria, or something else. And that unfortunately was inconclusive. And so our family was then sent to Ohio where I was evaluated again.

And my family at that time was told just to kind of see how my liver developed. I was on medication to improve my bio flow to see if that would help things. Unfortunately, that did not help the situation. And by the time we returned from Ohio, I was placed on the organ transplant waiting list by my team at Children's Health Care at Atlanta.

And so the waiting game kind of began. And it didn't take that long. It was put on the list that was very young before an age of three. And an opportunity came about.

And it was awesome. It was looking great. My family got the phone call and we observed to Atlanta. Preop went great.

We were good to go. But little did the people who were doing the operation know just how much of it. They thought it would be an average day at the office, but that would not be a case. When I was in surgery, my body could not sustain the IVs.

And so it started as a standard medical procedure, quickly turned for the worst. And my body actually went into cardiac arrest. And so I was lost for a little bit. Ultimately, it was revived.

And obviously at that point, the surgery was called off. And I was acting strange. I was kind of talking to her or battling and doing stuff. And I wasn't doing that.

And my parents had that parent intuition of something is not right. And I was evaluated by neurology. And as I was being handed back over to my parents from the neurologist, I had a seizure. And that point became abundantly clear that whatever had happened was very bad.

It impacted my ability to walk, my ability to talk, to see, to make facial expressions. Everything that we say for granted nowadays. And so through a lot of rehabilitation and just a lot of, quite frankly, miracles, I was able to get the call, I only got the call for transplant on December 31st of 1999, which was New Year's Eve. And so our family went to the hospital and the surgery was going to be later that night.

And so we went to the New Year's Eve celebration where the same was out with the old and within you. And that was very fitting given the events that transpired later that evening. I ultimately woke up on January 1st, 2000 in a new millennium with a brand new liver. And that is kind of the, yes, that's kind of the abridged version minus some pretty large details, but pretty abridged.

But that's kind of how I got to the transplant and kind of opened the floor up to the rest of the audience in the conversation. Okay, my jaw is on the ground. Okay. It's fast forward to 2021.

You're so well spoken. And we've been hearing these great things about you trying to help make life happen by these amazing things that you're doing with your higher education. But let's talk about the podcast and how you ended up like saying, Hey, get to life. Hey, crew, guess what I'm doing?

Let's talk about that part. So I originally was not supposed to be doing this. Actually, I am a graduate student at University of Georgia getting my master's in social work. I'll actually be graduating on the 14th of this month.

I know graduation. So as part of my graduate work, I am placed at a place inside in the Athens community or somewhere around Athens. And so I got a place to change to your residential, which is a location here in Athens that is primarily focuses on building communities, really integrating kind of the holistic perspective of community development. And they have properties in Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, where y'all are in Texas.

And so before I started working with them, I have to do a project of some sort. And my supervisor, who I would be under changed me and said, what are you passionate about? What do you want to do? And I told them about my transplant, about me and where I ultimately want to be, which is being a social worker in the transplant setting, whatever that might look like.

And she said, I have an idea. I want you to develop an organ donation awareness program that will be implemented on a virtual format at every single one of our Columbia residential locations across the country. Wow. And yes, no pressure.

No pressure. Exactly. No pressure, right? You know, we look to use the expert on this and you can use whoever you want.

And so my mind immediately, the three names came to mind. The first name was my mentor, Edward Drake II, who is the founder of the U.K. Organ Institute Transplant Foundation Foundation. I'm very involved in.

He came to mind, obviously, my home OPO here in Georgia, like Lincoln, Georgia, Kingdom Mind, and also LOCA did because I've heard from y'all's podcast and following the work that y'all do that really, organization awareness is very big on the culture of the organization. And I felt like it, including that in my project, which is really served to benefit. It's really benefit that. And so I just started making phone calls and ultimately got connected with Mr.

O who is incredible. Oh, man. I have been absolutely blown away by the support from LOCA and from really all my community partners. So, you know, like you say, make life happen.

That's the goal of this is really to inform, inspire, and empower, inform individuals by you know, dispelling those, those miss and sharing those organization facts, inspire them to not only registries, organizers, but also to make positive kidney health decisions because a lot of people who need transplants need to get me and then finally to empower them to not only make those decisions, not only be informed about their kidney health, but ultimately to go out and be the positive change for their communities. And that's how I got connected with Mr. O. So, well, you know, you got to spend some time with our own Cheryl McGee Hill.

She's a LOCA community educator. And I'm sure she loved the opportunity. She's always looking for new and innovative ways to educate about donation. She has tied to donation herself.

So let's talk about that meeting and your plan for making life happen. Sure. So the meeting really started, reached out to her via email and said, you know, hey, my name is William Porter. This is what I'm doing.

Here's how I'm affiliated with Oregon donation awareness and everything. And didn't really think a lot of it. I don't really know why. Just because I was reaching out to so many people.

I got an email response back and she was very supportive. And we set up a meeting almost immediately. And to say that I've been blown away by her support and by LOCA support would be an understatement. I've gotten a lot of support from y'all and I really do appreciate it.

And yeah, it's really cool to work with somebody who has a personal connection like I do because I feel like that in the world of organization awareness, the kidney health awareness that some of the people who do it the best or the best of their job are the ones that have a personal connection to it. And so, you know, I'm just really being able to bring her in and highlight her and everything that y'all are doing at LOCA. I feel like it's really benefited the project. I love it.

And we love being with the other partners as well. We were kind of blown away because we were like, okay, he started Operation Impact, a webinar series. And we were talking about your talking points about the why, the need, the impact, facts and all of this. Like a lot of thought went into this, which is amazing.

And then talked to us about setting that up and then the delivery. How do we get that word out? Sure. So really the thought process wasn't kind of in two phases.

The first phase was the oh my gosh, I can't believe I actually have the chance to do this phase. You know, you have all these ideas coming to you at once. And then the second phase is okay, how do we actually make this happen? And so I sat down and kind of put myself in the perspective of the people that I knew this would be going out to.

And so kind of unlearning, if you will, what I already knew and approaching it that way so that way I could think, okay, well, if I was, if I had never heard about this before, what would be some questions that I would have? Or if this, you know, if this has an impact in me, what would I need to hear to help me realize, hey, this does impact me in my community? And so approaching it from that perspective, turning the mirror around and looking at the community that I was going to be going into and understanding that, I felt like really helped me get an idea of exactly how I needed to approach designing the program. And then ultimately when it came to the implementation of it or the rolling it out, it sounds like it's alive, but it's the truth.

It really was not that difficult. As I've mentioned before to a couple of my friends, I distributed my own podcast, I wrote my own blog. So doing this kind of virtual platform, if you will, is very natural to me. And so it was pretty easy uploading the videos, the setting the pre-recordings was a little challenging with schedules from the other on one time zone.

I'm on another. I'm on a partner of a community partner in mind in California. They're on a very different time zone. But I feel like they all came together very well from the design phase, all the way to the implementation phase.

And obviously I had a lot of wonderful support from my mentor, Edward Drake and the Youth Me, Oregon City Transplant Foundation. They're actually the headline supporter, if you will, of the program. And I got a lot of feedback from them about kind of how to approach things and I feel like overall, it's a pretty successful program. And I'm excited to kind of see where it goes from here as far as wrapping up the program and seeing what kind of the after effects might be on it.

And I'm going to actually probably replace me in this Get the Life podcast if you keep talking because they used to pick on me because I'm on a thick cage and accent and I needed subtitles when I spoke. And then you come in here and you have such a great idea, great mission, great thought process and delivery. Right? So you think, okay, what would I need to know?

What questions would I have? And that's how you basically develop your content. Those are all things, everything that you're doing, I can test from our side. We're always trying to figure out how to do those things.

And you're doing it. How did you figure out the best way to market so that the most ears listeners are tuning in? So the best way as far as the marketing and kind of raising that crowd as well, if you are people excited about it, really came down to a couple of things. One, when I talked with my community partners, I said, yes, this is being put out to our residents at Columbia residential and east of the states.

But I also want you also to promote this within your own organizations to show to your community and say, this is what we're doing to make an impact. And so we started there and then also really working with Columbia residential social media team. I did a lot of work with them in helping figure out exactly how to trace certain things or how to do specific graphics. A lot of what I do for my podcast and everything.

I do a lot of web design, et cetera. So I already knew a lot about that. But pulling from expertise from my community partners as well as really the social media team at Columbia residential ultimately I feel like helped me present this in a way that it raised maximum amount of awareness in the time frame that I had. And I would like to think that I would have more time to do it.

Sometimes you're only here for a certain amount of time and you have to make the best of it. And I feel like that's what we've done. And how are you making this measurable in terms of really scaling your success? So the great thing about it being a YouTube video is one you can see the views, which is really good.

And also because this is being rolled out through Columbia residential, they actually have an ability to go in and look at their internal metrics when this is rolled out. So they can see exactly how many people at each of their locations view this video and view this content and then they can send that and they will send that back to me. And then kind of a report and say, hey, this is the number of people that viewed in this state. This is people that viewed in Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, et cetera.

So it's really nice to know just because it's a virtual, it makes things a whole life easier on as far as measurement because you don't have to do a lot of thinking. I wonder, oh, I wonder how many people watch the video. Just look at the number and you pull the internal metrics and you have your answer. I have maybe a derail, but a serious question about your time frames of your transplant and all that.

So I can give you a, you know, my own personal story of that day and that night. And I too felt like I'm not sure I'll be here tomorrow because we were all told the same thing that the world was going to end on that night. Why 2K? Yeah.

Why 2K? It's a little before Sarah's time so she doesn't understand it, but we... You'll forgive me for a minute. But in all seriousness, you know, the way you've been able to take, you know, your life experience and then pay it forward, I love the idea, you know, actually, you know, what you were presented with.

This is, you know, why don't you do this, you know, and put something on, you know, on, you know, electronic format. And to be able to take it and run with it the way you did is very commendable. I just want to let you know that. Yeah.

You know, it's the follow through. And I think a lot of times when you have people who are pursuing degrees because you were getting your master's social work, just like I did, and we both have, you know, personal connections to donation, transplantation. And that's where you really find that niche of passion. And I think you having the follow through to not only pursue your degree, which is already commendable and social work, but then focus it in on raising awareness for this cause.

Tell me how you think personally, because you're already doing it, but how do you think your life experience, your transplantation, process and journey is going to make you a better social worker in the future? Well, that's, that's a hard question. You got to get it. So I think really what it comes down to is that personal connection, right?

Where sometimes you, you could be in a hospital setting, you could be in a family care setting, and you could be dealing with people who are going through things that you never wish on anybody. And sometimes they'll say, Hey, you know, you just don't understand. But knowing me and my story, I can turn on and say, actually, yes, I do. You know, you might be going through something different.

I had a liver, you might need kidney, heart, injuries, et cetera. But I've been there. I've been the kid who has seen three, actually, excuse me now, four of my best friends die who have had transplants. Two of them before I graduated high school, one of them transferred to UGA and another one just over this past summer.

And so I've seen, I've seen the pain, I've seen the hardship, but I've also seen a lot of the choice, you know, and the celebrating their small victories. And what I try to do in a podcast, the joy and the journey podcast is to really focus on the choice to find the people who even when the situation is hard, even when it is so hard to look at it from a positive light and a positive perspective, they do it. And so that's really how that came about and ultimately how I see it hanging off of me in my career is to be able to bring that aspect of knowledge from seeing transplant from the other side. Because social workers, they'll go to work nine to five or they might be on call, but unless they've had a personal connection, there's a side of transplant that they will never see.

And that's okay. But as somebody who has seen, now, we will be able to see both sides of the equation from the recipient side and also the provider side. I can have a level of knowledge to know why we ask them any questions and know why is it that we give these people all the resources in the world that they don't take them. Well, as someone who's received a transplant, I can tell you sometimes it has to do with depression, sometimes it has to do with anxiety, it has to do with whatever it might be.

But understanding that and being able to see it from both perspectives at the same time, I feel like really pays off for me and will hopefully make me a very good social worker regardless of where I am. We're going to give you an A right now. Good job. And I love that one of the components of Operation Impact or webinar series was facts.

I'm out in the community. We educate some people don't want to talk about death, but some people are just misinformed. And so busting those myths, I know that's where Cheryl came in to help you a lot. Tell us how that portion of it went and why that was so important to focus on.

Well, I love all my community partners. They're absolutely incredible. And part of me really wishes I actually recorded this section. One of the last ones I was actually reversed because the way that Ms.

Cheryl and this Tiffany Moore, who was my contact at Lifelink of Georgia, the way that they collaborated on that section was truly magical to see their connection. And I almost kind of sat back and felt like I was observing my own project, but from an observer, not the actual participant. And it was really cool just to see her level of knowledge and experience and how she was able to combine that with my community partners and Lifelink. And that was really neat because in these communities are going into sometimes, we can have the best intentions in the world, but we're not there on the ground.

Cheryl is there in Louisiana. She knows the community. She knows the ends and helps. And being able to lean on that and gain from that knowledge and adding it to my project, I felt like just really went well.

And to say that I enjoyed this process and sitting down with Ms. Cheryl would be an understatement. We probably had, I think it was a good 45 minute conversation afterwards just on the phone talking about life. She's one of those people that you can approach her just about anything, organization and transplant.

And before we know you'll look down at your watch and you're like, oh my gosh, I've been here for 45 minutes. What am I doing? But in all seriousness, I'm very honored to have her support. And it was really cool to see the knowledge that she had and her ability to communicate that and also to combine that with Ms.

Tiffany Moore from Lifelink was really something special to see. William, I know you graduate soon. So I happen to know a guy who is in the hiring of social workers here at LOPA. Who's that Joe?

I'm pretty certain that he would be very interested in you coming over. Sorry, like Flank of Georgia. But seriously, so, and I know actually I am serious, but if not that, so what's next for William? Like you obviously have taken on so much while you're in grad school and while you're trying to get your masters there in social work.

So what's next down the road there? Well, next is probably to actually graduate. That's kind of important. You have to agree before you can do anything.

I'll graduate on the 14th this month. I'm very excited. And after that, I'm actually looking at a couple opportunities. One of them is I believe an opportunity with a Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville.

On the 20th side note, I was actually accepted as a social worker intern or a believer in the Kinney Transplant Department last summer. However, because of COVID-19 surprise, I did happen. And so after that, I was really kind of deep down. I was like, why in the world did this happen?

Then some other opportunities came about. So that's one avenue I see myself going into. I've also become in the contact of the Florida State University with a couple of folks out there doing some really incredible work and working in transplant research. And so I've talked with them in the way that I see my career building is either going to route of social worker actually in the transplant setting, whether it be an OPO or in a transplant center or going to route of getting my PhD.

I'm actually doing the research to make sure that the information that we have about outcomes, about post-traumatic stress disorder, about all these other things that are important to the transplant experience that those inform the work that social workers do. And so really being on that front end and cutting edge of finding that research and helping inform the people out there in the communities. That's kind of the two areas that I see myself going into. But again, the way I view life is I'm going to take it a day at a time, step at a time.

I'm going to continue to take joy in what I'm doing, to take joy in my own journey, to continue doing my podcast, to continue writing my blog, and to just continue loving life and enjoying the second chance that I've been so graciously given. You're a good guy. Good guy. I love it.

All right. So you mentioned your podcast. You mentioned your blog. We want to know how to find those.

And then the webinar series, is that something that we can find on YouTube? So how do you do that? So let us know how to connect. Sure.

So all of my platform, you can find, I believe it's www.impactamericavidea, and those cases. com. You can also find the YouTube channel. It's called Operation Impact.

And actually, if you're having trouble finding YouTube videos, I have actually internally embedded each of the three and will soon be four videos on that website. It'll be under the Operation Impact tab. On that site, you will also see the blog, the podcast. I actually have been collaborating with a couple of my friends, Kyle Hockridge in Canada, who has some things.

And also Anthony Reid, who has kidney trails, he has a podcast, and Jonathan Schreiler, who has a hope of Jonathan. So there's two podcasts are actually along with mine, all on that site. So you can find all that information, learn about the program, watch the videos, we'll have some more content on there. And go over and just take a look at it.

We're doing some really great work. And I'm very honored and blessed to be connected with local and other people in the country. And even around the world, up in Canada, who are doing this and passionate about it. And I'm just very honored to again, have this sort of global and really all my community partners because I can have an idea all I want or you can have an idea of what you want to do.

But sometimes it takes other people. And as great as I was raised, I used to hear myself talk. I love to find the people who are doing the work and elevate their voices and work kind of in collaboration and work together. And I feel like that's something that you've done with this project.

And I'm just really excited for the future and just see what comes here on the gift and life podcast. We always talk about it just takes one person, one person to make a difference, one person to make life happen. And you just sound like a good human, that one person that's doing good. So keep it up.

Good luck. Yeah, it sounds like you have a bright future and a future that involves donation and helping so many families. So thank you for choosing this path here on the get to life podcast. We take a moment for mental health.

Yeah, so often families reach out to us because they are quote unquote stuck in the rut. So because of that, Sarah's going to be talking about that very top of the day. Yeah, so today, we're going to talk about what do you do when you are stuck in your despair? You can't get out of it.

Nothing is working. You just feel hopeless at times and you just feel like there's this dark cloud in your yourself. So what do you do? Well, first of all, just acknowledge that you are withdrawing because that's the main thing with despair.

When you are so filled with despair, you start to withdraw from family, from friends, from yourself. That's a really big one. You're not acknowledging, you know, how you're feeling. You're just basically numbing out.

So what do you do? I have some coping skills. Oh, wait, hold on, let me get my pen. Yes, let's go.

I love a good coping skill. So the first one is take a walk. Get outside your house. Change of scenery.

Yes, just anything fresh air. It's probably one of the hardest things to do when you're a lot of people who are filled with despair just lay down. They lay on the couch, they sit down. But then the walls close in on you.

It's dark. It's just, yes, just get up and take a walk around the block. You know what you notice? It's funny.

The first thing when you start walking oftentimes, at least I do birds chirping. It's the fresh air, but it's also you hear the birds. It is. It's different stimulus than just a blah, blah, on a TV.

I like that smell of freshly cut grass. I don't know. I'm like, yeah, bring it back to childhood or something. Like that like perks me up.

Well, it really is. It's about like stimulus. Like you don't get fresh air in your house. You don't hear things.

Get outside and have stimulus. You're physically stimulated mentally. Your senses are going off. Just get outside even if it's for a couple minutes.

The next thing is just give your sorrow some words. Whether that's you talk it out, write it out. Just in some form, get out what you're feeling. Speak it, write it, think it.

Just acknowledge it essentially. And it really helps. I mean, we hear it all the time. I'm not personally a good writer.

I don't like to write down my feelings, but I do like to verbalize them. Even if it's just like a voice memo on my phone, I can get it out and you just work it out. It makes everything better. It does.

My sister's my person. So I'm like, I'm comfortable. Yeah. Safe place.

Here's what's going on. We've talked about that in the past. You know, having someone who's a sounding board who's not there to fix a solution or provide a solution. Just listen.

You know, so it's obviously very keenness. Yeah. And you can use a lot of like imagery because I know in grief, like there's a lot of imagery. So use imagery to describe to yourself and others like how you're feeling.

Next is to just honor it. And this kind of ties in with the next one, which is we've talked a lot. We've talked on the podcast about toxic positivity. Don't make yourself feel better by only being positive.

That doesn't work. Acknowledge your feelings. Honor them. Say, there's a reason I feel this way.

There's a reason I'm thinking this way. Don't just numb it and push it down or try to excuse it away with positivity. It doesn't work. I had a friend on social media and so she said, okay, here's me being real.

I put a lot of pictures of things look perfect, but they're not. So I'm signing off. You can text me. Got some stuff I'm going through.

You know, so I was trying it was too heavy. And I was like, oh, I get that. Yeah, we talk about all the time. Social media is a tricky thing.

You don't get a lot of authenticity on it. So honor it and be authentic with yourself and others in whatever way it works real. And as always, the last one is to seek out connection. Go to someone, anyone text.

It doesn't have to be a phone call. I know that can seem huge. Some people even just calling just text someone. I'm having a dark day.

Need someone to like witness for this and to feel like I'm not alone. We talk about how important human connection is. It's the key to everything. And when you're full of despair and you're withdrawn, you're isolating yourself from yourself and others.

So seek out someone who will listen and just be there with you. Good tips. Not overwhelming, you know, because sometimes it's like, I don't know if I can do all that. Yeah, little steps.

Take it every one day at a time. I love it. Maybe you have a topic you'd like share to cover. Email us info at the get to life dot org.

It's our question and answer segment guys. And I have a question I'd like to bring to the table out in the community. Lots of questions coming in about living donation. What is it?

How do I learn more? And so of course I think about the podcast, right? Because we're kind of do our learning. But I want to talk about that.

So how do we help people learn more about living donation? Yeah, Laurie. So so we talk, obviously, a lot about the cease donation, the cease to organization, because that's what OPO is focused on. But 20% of the donations and transplants come from living donation as well.

So obviously, oftentimes, the majority of the times, the person that's interested in living donation has a friend or family that may have a need. And of course, they're already being worked up at a specific transplant facility. And oftentimes, you know, that is one resource that can be utilized because obviously they work regularly with many living donors. But if you don't have that as a resource, you know, org, UNOS.org has a page.

If you go to the transplant tab there, they have basically everything that you need to know about living donation, directed donation, kidney pair donation, non directed donation, all of the aspects of understanding the living donation and the change that takes place there. So from start to finish, so you can find out a ton of resources there. Yeah. And if you like to listen to the podcast, you are learning with us here, right?

So we talk about that. We learn from our people. So there's a bunch of episodes. One lady was looking for information about living donation and found our podcast and then went on to donate, which was pretty incredible.

So her story is on episode 87, 76 is another episode 69 episode 160. So there's lots out there, you can go to the gift of life.org, you can search for living donation. It's always incredible. The wealth of information we learn right here on the gift of life podcast.

Yeah, always good to learn and have a refresher. So go listen to this episode and go to this website to Joey mentioned. But if you have a question for us, why don't you give us a call? 5046483477.

On every episode of the gift of life, we honor a hero. Today we honor Jonathan Kettwa. And we learn about him from his family. It's every person's nightmare.

Your loved one was an accident or it's dying. In our case, our son, Jonathan was in a traffic accident in June of 2019 and suffered a traumatic brain injury and would not survive. We went home and as a family, we knew in our hearts what needed to be done. My husband wanted to donate his organs.

JD was a registered donor, but we couldn't get to his license. Lopa helped us through the process of what needed to be done. They are such a loving and caring group of people. JD was my little free bird hippie, a loving and kind spirited person, always giving and helping others.

So it seemed appropriate that even in death, he is still able to help others. He was able to donate six of his organs and many tissue donations as well. Jonathan David died on June 14, 2019. His spirit lives on today in so many new lives.

He is our hero. And now we pause and say, thank you to Jonathan for the gift of life. And that is episode 162 of the gifted life guys. Thanks for listening.

And remember, you can always register as an organ tissue and I don't hurt any time. Register me that work. Special thanks to our guests, William Porter, what a busy, busy guy, obtaining his masters. And then while he's doing that, of course, teaming his passion of what happened to him throughout his lifetime with his academics to help save more lives.

That's just cool. That is just cool. Just leave it at that right. Like keep going.

William, we hope to have him back here on the gifted life. But sorry. Yeah, all right. The best place to find us is on our website guys, the gifted life.

You can listen to any of our episodes on our website or wherever you like to listen, whether it's Google, Spotify, Apple, if you do listen on Apple, go ahead and subscribe and give us a five star rating so that others can find our podcast on social media, guys, Facebook, where the gifted life podcast, Twitter, and Instagram, we're at gifted life pod. We hope that you go out and do something you would normally do to help us make life happen. Thanks for listening. This is a production of LOPA, or the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency.

The gifted life is hosted by Lori Steele, Joey Buudro, and Sarah Blakemore, our executive producer is Kirsten Heis, producer is Shalom Caraway. Intern is Rebecca Rannam, and we are recorded, engineered, and mixed in our Covington Louisiana studio by Troy Perez.