Organ Donation Gets Healthy Schmelthy

Hello, and welcome to the Get to Life Podcast, where we have conversations about Oregon, tissue, and eye donation. I'm Laurie Steele. I'm Joey Boudreau. I'm Sally Chantry.

And we're so glad that you choose to tune in the Get to Life. It's our way of spurring those healthy conversations about Oregon Eye and tissue donation. And guess what? Lots coming up on this episode.

You won't want to miss. Yeah, first we'll be talking about a beautiful event coming up. I think nature and fitness boom. Boom.

Oh, and horses. Coming together as one. Yeah, all for donation. Gotta love that.

And then maybe a trading places of sorts, guys. One of our podcasting friends out there in the podcasting world. Coming on our show, we're going on their show, but we're learning about donation, which is going to be so cool, a first of its kind. Sounds great.

And in previous episodes, we've talked about direct donation. But today we're going to have guests who's going to talk with us about plenty of donation, and can they do direct donation? That's a good question. All right, we're learning here.

We're having fun here on the Get to Life, and we want you to help us spread the word. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to do that. Absolutely. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Google Play, or whatever your favorite podcast that might be.

As Joey says, it's easy, peasy. It is easy. I love it. Just mess with Joey.

I'm sure he didn't think that was going to stop. Joey like it. Love his office tone. And guys, we know social media is big on Facebook.

Donate Life, Louisiana on Twitter, Instagram. We're at Donate Life, LA. A lot of what we talk about here, you can find there on those pages. And you can also give us a call at numbers 504, 648, 3477.

We'd love to hear from you. When you say it, I hear music playing. I just do. We should have a jingle.

Oh, you say I brought it up maybe for holidays. I don't know. I'm a little present. If you're listening, our little IT guru out there.

All right, that's our hotline. It works like a voicemail, and you can do it on your pajamas overnight. We just want to hear your story and we may play your audio here on the podcast. Hang on to your heads, guys.

Lots to get to. Here we go. On this episode of the gifted life of friend in the studio. Hey, Sean Paul.

Hey, how are you all? Good. The Sean Paul Harrison, right? So your day job is position and donation specialist for who in particular?

For Louisiana Organ Percomonation. Oh, he's one of us. Oh, yeah. He's admitting that.

But we love Sean Paul because you saw the need to go out into the community and help spread about organics and donation awareness. So you're here because of one of your events. We're in the outdoors. I'm excited about it.

Yeah, I mean, I am very biased about it. I'm very excited about the upcoming trail run for life. It's before the annual. It seems just like yesterday that I walked into Mr.

Bill who owns Cherokee Ridge Horse Farm and basically gave him this idea of something that we wanted to do and he didn't throw me out and accepted it four years later. Here we are. And it sounds beautiful. Joey was telling us about it.

It's now he's excited about the horses out there. So where in Louisiana is this? So it's in Carricket, right outside of Lafayette, Louisiana. It's only a couple of miles.

But the area that is in it really is breathtaking. It's 170 acres of beautiful rolling hills. They have dozens and dozens of horses. These horses, they're actually used a lot for therapy for children and also for the people to deal with different things.

There's a beautiful river that runs on the edge of the course. There's this trail. A lot of people at first, I think the first year, they were wondering like, is this going to be really difficult where I won't be able to really enjoy it or is it going to be too difficult for me to even participate? And the answer is no.

The only difference is that it's non-pavement running. It's very beautiful. I even tell the people that walk, they actually have an advantage because they get to stay on the beautiful course longer. So it's really exciting.

I mean, it's just a beautiful event. Is this for our donor families or any donor family and recipients or who specifically can tell? Yeah, Sally. It's really grown into.

We wanted this thing to grow. And we obviously, we wanted to invite the community as a whole. And then also we really wanted to have donor families, recipients, those who were waiting, those who maybe even lost someone. We've seen the participation with all of those individuals really grow, especially this year.

We have two unique things this year. One is that a recipient that had been participating since the first year, her name was Stephanie Barnes. She received a double lump transplant twice. And because of that gift of life, she was able to run, walk the fun run every year with her son.

And it was one of their favorite events. And unfortunately, she passed away in March and her mother had reached out to our community educator, Susanna Morton, not long after her passing and asked if we were still going to be doing the trail run. And Susanna, you know, obviously made sure that she was aware that we were going to continue this. And so, you know, giving it some thought what we decided to do is the fun run is actually going to be dedicated in honor of Stephanie Barnes.

So it's called the Brave Run Brave One. Her son is going to be the one that's going to be leading up to her. That's good. I like this event because it's always very theme different from the previous one.

And the theme this year is together, we are better. Where'd you come up with that? You know, it's a long story. One that you would have to have our own podcast.

I'm saying you were calling me with your voice. Tell me what happened. I'd probably bore you all and you may be some listeners. But, you know, the together we are better is obviously the core of it is about organ tissue and eye donation.

It really is. And that's one thing that we want to make sure that we're spreading the awareness. One of the things is because I do have a teenage son who asks a lot of questions and there's a lot of diversity going on in the world. And so it's really about unity and how that is connected with organ tissue and eye donation is we have families that are experiencing, you know, one of the tragic, the most tragic experiences they'll ever have.

And what we see, especially from LOPA, is we see that when other people come together, whether it's the family or the physicians and nurses and supporting these families, something good does come out of it, some hope, some healing. And so that's really in a nutshell without going too long into it, you know, together we are better. That is something that we feel very strongly about. We really like to get the community involved.

So we've been going out and working with hospitals. We've been working with schools. We've been working with just people. They don't even have an attachment to donation.

Yeah, we've been working with servicemen and women. So it's really about spreading that message and even kind of associating people that didn't know about donation and also letting them spread that message as well. And one more thing I wanted to mention was something that we added this year that's really special is we're going to have a school spirit award and it's for the largest participating school that is attending the event. And the award is going to be an honor of Lacey Tequino, which is one of our donor heroes.

So it's kind of a spirit stick that we're going to be awarding the schools for the largest participation. So we're really excited about that and honoring her family. Wow. And then you do all this work because we know all these events come with lots of work and logistics and things.

But why do you do this? Who's benefiting from this event? The most important is spreading the awareness about the importance of organ tissue and non-donation. It's also about honoring these families, you know, the heroes that have saved lives, you know, the recipients who received the gift of life and really those that are waiting, you know, for a gift of life.

And personally, in our LOPA family now, it's waiting for a kidney. So this is universal. This really affects everyone and we want to make sure that we're representing that. Yeah.

And so first things we've been in our community education here at LOPA and maybe the horse warm too. I was thinking. No, they donate everything back to LOPA for community education. Great partners, right?

So the LOPA Trail Run for Life happening October 29th. That's a Sunday. Hopefully we got your attention. Hopefully you want to be a part of this.

I'm assuming online registration. www.lopa.org on the events page. Is on the events page where you can get the information, you can get the address and everything but walk up registration. We want to see you there.

We welcome you, right? Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Here on the gift of life, a little something different but we're all excited about it. We're doing maybe a flip the script kind of thing.

So we're partnering with another podcast and we are going to talk, Oregon Eye and Tissue Donation. And instead of asking questions, we will be asked questions. So no pressure. Rishi B.

How are you? Doing well. How are you today? Welcome to the gift of life.

We are good. We are all smiles and some of us are nervous. I don't know. We heard some of your past podcasts.

Your podcast is called Healthy Shmoorthy. Healthy Shmozzy Shmozzy. The fancios public health podcast. No, I like that.

He's onto something there, right? But I like it. So tell us your background and where you're coming to us from. Sure.

I've spent some years in the healthcare industry and I'm a master's of public health. And from all that experience, and in particular, some of the healthcare reform stuff that's happening in the news, I was kind of curious about how much information is really out there. How much do people actually know about healthcare? And when I'm talking with my friends and I'm talking with friends and family, it turns out there is some kind of communication gap there.

I think there's a lot that kind of goes out in the news, but I'm not sure a lot of it is being translated very well to the public. And so I thought, hey, what can I do with my hands, with my powers? What can I do myself? And I thought, hey, why don't I create kind of a hopefully a low barrier of access podcast where we can talk about these kind of topics just in general, lay them out and hopefully a easy to understand format.

Yeah, here on the podcast, we always say one person can make a difference and we've listened to your podcast, Healthy Shmoorthy. We know that you're doing that because you're helping people make educated decisions about things and you're making it fun. We were dancing to some of your music, right? We were laughing at some of your topics and it started a conversation here as well.

So it seems to be working. Thank you very much. I'll dance very well. Well, we got to work on Joe.

So how did you hear about the gifted life, sir? I heard about the gifted life, I believe, through another podcast, The Morning Stream that I think the gifted life did an ad or something like that. And when I heard that, I was like, wow, that sounds like a podcast I'd really enjoy. I listened to your Aaron Eisenberg, Star Trek actor episode and really enjoyed that.

And I was like, hey, I need to talk to these people. They got something going on here that sounds really enjoyable. And I think my listeners would appreciate that as well. That's where it all began.

Well, yeah, Aaron's our friend. First name basis now, Richard. We're first name basis with you as well. But you know, our goal is to spur healthy conversations about Oregon, and tissue donation.

We thought this was a good episode to kind of go back to the basics, learn where you're coming from when it comes to donation. We know you have that Masters of Public Health. So we're trying to communicate with the public as well. We want folks to make educated decisions about donation.

And so that's our goal as well to educate, to have fun while we're doing it. And hopefully we increase our donor registry here in Louisiana across the country as well. So I'm going to turn the mic over to you. I'm nervous, I'm nervous.

I don't know. All right. So here we go. Yeah.

You're on the hot seat. Let me put the lamp on you. Okay, there we go. Oh, wow.

So let's start with the general. How did the idea of the podcast start? Who came up with that? Well, I'd like to say it was me.

The erasure. You can't take the credit for that. Our CEO actually travels and goes to these conferences conventions. And we always like to learn from our partners and look at what's going on.

What could we be doing better? And so she came back and she said, maybe a podcast and then got with our IT department and said, what do you think about this? Can we do that? It's about two years ago, we started tinkering around with it.

Our first taping took basically all day. And I think we looked at each other and we were saying, what have we gotten ourselves into? We knew it was a good thing to do. We had all come to the table with different ideas.

We wanted to honor our donors, that's for sure. But we figured this was another way to kind of reach out and to educate, right? So we are the only organ procurement agency across the country that has a podcast geared toward Oregon, I, and Titian donations were proud of that fact. And we tried to partner with folks from across the country, across the world, to help spread that message because while rules and things may be different when you go to a different country, the feeling is the same.

Those donor families, they want to honor their heroes. The recipients want to celebrate life and those waiting. They just need someone to talk to. So that's kind of our goals about two years ago.

We sat here so now we have more equipment. We talk a little bit more. We're all about comfortable with each other. We kind of got the podcast thing down.

We hope and then we get to partner with folks like you and hopefully reach people that we would have never reached before, have we not turned to this format? How long was the Louisiana Oregon Procurement Agency around before the podcast started? Was it around for a while? Yes.

Louisiana Oregon Procurement Agency is the only Oregon Procurement Organization or OPO, as we say it in the donation world. It is the only one in Louisiana and it was founded actually on April 1st of 1988. Oh, wow. Been around for quite some time.

In 1984, NODA was passed the National Organ Transplant Act and prior to that, it was inequity in the way Oregon Procurements were allocated. And NODA kind of tied everything together from a national perspective so that the sickest patients would get the transplants. And part of that was the establishments of Oregon Procurement Organizations, our OPOs like Lope, Louisiana Oregon Procurement Agency, across the nation. So that we would be kind of the middlemen for that transplant and that transplant recipient and that donor, that hero and that donor family.

So OPOs were established throughout the nation, mostly in the 80s between 1984 and 1988. Okay. And that was after the NODA Act was passed. Okay.

If we can put a pin on that for just a second. The podcast is really great. Just for my listeners' benefit, the podcast is so much behind this Oregon donation. So I highly recommend everyone listening to the podcast.

I have to compliment you guys though. How did you come up with a gifted life title? That's a great title. It says everything you need to know.

Well, we appreciate that. Yes. Like I said, we had these folks who had been picked to start this project and we were kind of sitting at a round table and we said, okay, what kind of segments would we like to talk about? One thing that was across the board was that we want to honor a hero in every podcast.

The other thing was, what are we going to name it? What's been taken? What is going to get people's attention? And so the vote was out.

The gifted life was on there and it won unanimously. And so here we are. Okay. Basically, like our mission, our purpose is to make life happen here at LOPA.

That's pretty much our theme for everyone. And that life is something that stands out from many different facets, from our own lives, the fulfillment that we get in working with these donor families and heroes. And also the life, of course, that is given from that donation. And then of course, the recipient themselves and everyone's lives that are touched.

So the gifted life takes on so many different meanings for us. Sure. And then we're going to talk about that a little bit further. Let's go back to what you were saying.

So pre-Noda, was everything a little sporadic? Sounds like after Noda, if someone wanted to donate their organs, there's a little bit more structure around that. Do I kind of have that? Sounds right?

Yeah. So pre-Noda, each transplant center was their own organ procurement organization. Because of that, if they had a contract with a hospital and someone was a donor there, that donor would only be able to save lives for that particular transplant center. Clearly, there's inequity there.

So Noda established a fairness and a system called OPT and Organ Procurement Transplant Network basically laid the groundwork for everything that's happened since pretty much all the rules and regulations that we were governed by come from OPT and originated from Noda. So was the organ donor registry, has that been around pre-Noda as well? Or was that part of the act as well? It's different in different states, the timeframes.

Our registry is one of the older registries nationwide. Our was initiated sometime in the early 90s. Yeah, so we're about 20 years old and it's 2.5 million people strong today. So that's a lot of work in 20 years.

Yeah. Right. Sure. So that's a very significant portion.

Sure. And is that the same thing as having the organ donor mark on your driver's license? That's all I know about organ donor. I have that little mark on my driver's license and some other people do too.

Right. So here in Louisiana, in a lot of other states we partner with the offices of motor vehicles, we just came off of an OMB appreciation week. And so we go in and we train these workers that you have to see when you go to change your address or when you go to get a license. And so one of the questions that they're going to ask you is do you want to be an organ donor?

And so our goal is to reach you before you get to that point. And our goal is to help you make an educated decision about donations. So here in Louisiana, if you say yes, you get that part, that little red heart in other states that make a different marking. So here in Louisiana, it's a little red heart and that little red heart signifies that if you can, you would be an organ eye and tissue donor.

Okay. So just those organs then, the eye tissue and heart. Organ eye and tissue donation is what we do. So when it comes to organs, yeah, we recover the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, small intestine.

So that six organs recovered, but one person has the power to save up to nine lives. And that's because you have two lungs, you have two kidneys and that liver can be split and that smaller portion can go to a smaller adult or a child. When it comes to tissue, one person can give sight to two. Wow.

You know, corneous skin, tendons, ligaments. And so one person has the power to impact lots of lives to organ eye and tissue donation. Wow. You know, the human body never fails to amaze me.

Right. Yeah, that's amazing. So let's get into matching then. How are organs matched for a person?

So different organs are matched a little differently, some more specific than others. The more specific organs are the kidneys and pancreas. All of them have to be matched by blood type. Okay.

First and foremost, in blood donation, when you donate blood and it's transfused, you have to worry about what's called the RH factor, the positive or negative. In the organ donation, that doesn't matter. But the actual ABO, the blood type, whether you're an O type or an AB or, you know, A or B, that matter. So that's the first.

Okay. But then in kidney and pancreas, it's also based on certain antigens that the donor would have that have to match up at least to a degree with the recipients. It's called HLA human luko-cidic antigens. And once those are done, they're kind of matched up with the recipients.

And then the list that I mentioned earlier with OPTN, that comes up, the sickest patient with the closest match, then comes up first and approximately plays a part. And I guess I'm kind of getting ahead here, but approximately plays a part. But as far as the matching, it's proximity, the blood type and antigens with kidneys, I'm sorry, in size. And then with the heart and lungs, with the rest of the organs, antigens don't play quite as much of a role, but certainly still the blood type size and proximity play a factor in that match.

Okay. So this might be kind of a dumb question, but is a surgeon going inside a person who needs an organ and like measuring the space? Is that what you mean by size? That's a great question.

No, that's actually a great question. Okay. No, but we'll see on that list, they'll have a minimum and a maximum size for that particular patient. So they know their patients and they'll measure different things like, you know, the abdominal size, the thoracic or chest size or height and weight and all that.

And if they fit into that size range, that's how they'll be matched. Now, there are times, especially on kids where they'll, they'll come into the organ recovery itself and they'll measure and do a lot more specific, you know, measurement there for the potential recipient, you know, but that's only when we're talking, you know, if they're saying they can take up to a five, 10, 200 pound, you know, maybe they're 150 pounds, that's when they'll start doing more measurement. And then of course, in those cases, we'll have to have a backup in place. Wow.

And that organ didn't exactly match up. Wow. And Rishi, just to give you a real life example, we have a recipient that we work with and she was so sick in her mid 40s that she only weighed 68 pounds. Other folks who were her age were obviously heavier.

And so her gift came from a 16 year old, she knows that she shares that story. So, you know, size when it comes to donation matters. Wow. This is why I love learning about this stuff.

I had no idea there was a backup as well. So who are the people who are reviewing the list? I imagine they have medical backgrounds and all that kind of stuff. Yes.

So the list is reviewed by our allocation. We have allocation coordinators. If I can kind of back up maybe a little bit. Sure.

We haven't really talked about who and potentially become donors. And that pool is a lot smaller than most people think. Okay. A lot of people think that everyone can be an organ donor.

And the fact is the vast majority of us die in a way that you can't. If you cardiac arrest or if your heart stops, then unfortunately your cells die within your organs in an uncontrolled situation, you can no longer be an organ donor. The people who can potentially save lives are those who pass away, generally speaking from head injury, which then oftentimes causes the brain to swell. Of course, the hospital does everything in their power to save that person's life.

Unfortunately, there are times that everything they can do is not good enough. That patient's intubated on a ventilator and doctors assess the patient's neurological function. And if they have no neurological function, if their brain is completely dead, they are technically dead. They are then declared brain dead.

Their time of death is at that time. And it's at that point where, you know, there's a lot of support needed for those families because it's always in these brain injury cases, very sudden, these aren't expected. So we provide staff to support the families throughout all this time. And they also offer that family the opportunity to donate.

If and when they do say yes, hopefully they do, then we have staff that goes on site to take care of the management and treat the patient so that the organs are functioning at a higher quality level, the highest quality level, so that we can then allocate. And this is where that comes in. You mentioned the matching that allocation coordinator that I mentioned, that placement coordinator, then pulls up the list. It's an anonymous list.

We can't pick and choose who we donate to. The first person on the list gets the first offer and then the second and then so forth and so on. And so we're kind of how the list ties in and our staffing ties in to the allocation of the organs. This process usually takes 18 hours or so.

The entire case oftentimes takes well over 24 to 36 hours. So in that case, in this instance, where someone, you know, unfortunately had brain damage and so their, and then their family agrees that these persons organs can be donated, is there kind of like a length of time that the organs remain valid or usable rather? I didn't mention some of these that become brain damage. As you mentioned, some of those, these, they have a brain injury.

Some of those they progress and become better and some of them stay in a persistent vegetative state as you may have, you know, known before or coma. And these are only the ones that regress to absolute brain death that we're talking about here. Okay. So their timeframes in general are much shorter.

There have been rare occasions where they can be maintained, but their brain, there's not been an occasion documented once where their brain regains any function or suitable organs, the transplant. We can maintain for a day or two usually, you know, in extreme situations, we can sometimes go for a little bit longer, but it's difficult, especially when you talk about lungs, they're exposed, even though they're on a ventilator, every forced ventilation has the potential for pneumonia and infections to set in and things like that. So the sooner generally, the better is the case because there's no organ bank, there's no storage, there's nothing that we can put them on and say, okay, and a week will, you know, there's a patient, you know, but each organ has a very finite time. Time frame where they can be on ice.

Hearts and lungs are four hours. Wow. Inies and pancreas is about 24 hours. Liver and testing roughly about 12 hours.

So you have to have a home in place for that potential donor because of that, you know, we don't have that unlimited time. So, and then we have to have a backup in place each and every time just in case one of those falls through because that is such obviously a resource, you know, that's so rare, an opportunity for a second chance of life that's so rare. So we want to make sure now part that we don't drop the ball, so to speak, and you know, we make sure we have redundancy and backups in place. Okay.

You know, I don't know where I got this idea from, but I kind of thought that there's a freezer with, you know, all these things, all the organs waiting. So now this timing aspect, I didn't even consider this and you're saying, you know, it's only a few hours max, 12 hours, I think you mentioned for a liver. So in the case of a backup, so if the backup isn't used and that organ probably needs, there's only a couple of hours. When I'm in my backup, so there's a primary, we're, you know, going through the list as a primary recipient, that's that's potential.

That's the sickest, best match. And then the second sickest or best match would be the backup recipient. Gotcha. Let's say if when we're in the operating room and we think, okay, this is going to that primary recipient and all of a sudden now they've got, you know, on the transplant center and either one of two things you mentioned the size earlier or maybe the primary has gotten to the hospital and they realize they have an infection.

They just can't do the surgery because it's too much risk. Then that's when the backup becomes the primary. Gotcha. So because that time, like I mentioned, that timeframe is so quite obviously and I'm talking 12 hours from blood flow to blood flow.

So that includes part of the rest of the recovery. That includes the packaging process and the transportation. You know, so that's a whole lot of logistics that take place for that small of a timeframe. So we have to be working on our side and each of those transplant centers, the primary recipient transplants in the backup has to also be working simultaneously for this to work or everything to be kind of in concert or a donation to take place.

So I guess the bigger step back pictures, there's a whole lot of people doing a whole lot of work for this one miracle to take place. Right. And I'm going to further step back. I'm really glad NODO was passed because you're detailing all this and you know, you're talking about all these factors and aspects.

I do even consider, you know, blood type is one thing and all that kind of stuff, but then timing and having a primary and backup recipient and then making sure the organs are usable as well. There's a lot. Right. And that's one of the reasons we focus on education here in Louisiana.

So we partner, you know, with you, we partner with churches, we talk to one person, we talk to an auditorium full of folks so that we can explain the process so that they can make that decision and hopefully it's an educated decision and we hope that they say yes and get that hard on their license. A majority of folks do it at the OMBs. That's where everybody travels through. So everybody to be trained because as you heard from Joey, that's a lot to take in.

I know just listening on the podcast, but that's a lot for a family who expected to go home with their family, have dinner, do activities and then they have this traumatic event and now they have to learn about brain death and organ donation that they haven't discussed it as a family. That's a tough topic. So we have really special folks who work with those families and who are good at what they do. And if I can expand on the heart of the license and the OMB, if you put it on your license, or you designate yourself as a donor, you're right to what happens to you, supersedes anyone else's rights of what happens to you.

So that's legal document, first person. So that's why having a heart in your license is so important because it designates that that's what you wanted to do as your lasting gift when you pass and no one else has the right to take that away from you. And that's why we encourage family conversations. Like if you make that decision, yes or no, we're hoping for a yes.

If you say yes, then we need you to tell your family because if it is your time and you can give that gift, we will have to talk to your family. If you've been out of the country, we need to know certain things so that we can run certain tests so that we can recover the most precious gift possible. So we encourage those conversations. We want people to talk about it.

We want them to know the facts and have those conversations, not based on mis-free sheet. That maybe you have heard. Right. Right.

And one of the things that's very helpful is when somebody has had that discussion that when we follow up with them, we call all donor families post-recovery. So when we're following up with them just to check in, let them know how much we appreciate the gifts that they'll say, you know what, I am so glad that I spoke to my son or daughter or whoever it may have been. And they said, this is what they wanted. It was on their driver's license.

It gave us hope that they could help others. And so it makes their decision at a very tragic time easier for them to say, this is the right thing to do. And I think that's what makes it more important is that we've all talked about it. But once we actually do it, then those folks can walk away with some solace that this is what their loved one wanted.

Sure. And, Rishi, I work with our volunteers on the community. So it's donor family members, recipients, those waiting and we go out to these venues and we tell our stories. And so it's as simple as a 10 second conversation.

We have a great donor mom who works on her son and she said, we had this one conversation because we were watching Grey's Anatomy and they talked about donation and he said, Mom, if something happens to me, I want to be an organ donor. I mean, who wouldn't want a piece of this? And that's one of her stories that she goes out and she goes, that gives me such comfort because I knew what he wanted. So her son was a donor.

We honor him and we have actually met his recipient, which is pretty cool. So you never know what you're going to hear. And folks are inspired to register. There's a national registry.

Each state has their own registry. There's also a national registry that's kind of easier for folks who are listening from wherever. But register me.org. Register me.org.

That's something that we hope people remember and if they are inspired, they do sign up to be an organ, it's simple, it's fast, it'll save some time at most crucial time. You talked about a lot of different backgrounds because I was curious, what are the backgrounds of people who are involved in the organ transplant of their state, of the network rather than the organ transplant network of their state? And already you've mentioned communications. The one that came easily to mind for me was like a surgeon or someone like that, but already you mentioned communication and the volunteers and the field workers you mentioned.

So a lot of different backgrounds can be involved if someone is wanting to be involved with their state's network, it sounds like. Exactly. And so I was in every state and Joey said, we're the only one for Louisiana, but in Texas, they have more, they're bigger than we are. So if you call, they'll tell you where they are needed.

We like for folks to tell stories because we can throw facts at you all day. We can tell you how many people are waiting. We can tell you how many people in the state what most people need. But what we hear the most is that I remember that mom and I remember that passion and I remember her baby.

And so when I went to get my license, I said yes, because I remember that story. So we build upon that and we hope that we inspire folks to think about it, to talk about it. You know, it's not easy. Nobody wants to talk or think about death or dying, especially when it's your baby.

And so I think that's what happened without us. You can leave a legacy for donation. Sure. You know, it would be a great place for stories is now this might be a crazy idea, but what if someone who represented an organ network of their state started a podcast about organ donation?

What do you guys think about that? Oh, my God. I would like to meet them and shake their hands and give them a gold star. Like, you know, you got to change with the times and technology and you heard Joey talking about over the years in our registries 20 years old.

So, you know, you got to try what's new at the time, what's going to get people's attention. So right now we're kind of turning towards social media and targeting those zip codes where maybe not as many people are signing up as we'd like. We're also watching the culture changes that are going on, the discussions that are happening in those churches and those Kiwanis clubs, Rotary clubs. What are they wanting to hear?

What don't they know that we could help them? What stories can we use to inspire them? So you may have seen little JJ Robertson, he's a Saint Super fan, LSU super fan. He needed a liver.

He received one earlier this year, but he received an SV. He's got a WWE Championship belt, but he's a little kid with a huge personality. But he's out there on the front lines helping us spread organics, you know, nation awareness. So it takes one person to make a difference.

We have lots of those people and we're working together as a team. So I was kind of curious, changing tracks to the experience of being on the list. While you're waiting, is there such a thing as organs that are rarer than others? Is there one of those?

I think you mentioned there's nine organs. If you need one, it might be a little bit more difficult or it might be a longer wait on the list potentially. A couple of things. All right.

So there's six organs, but nine, yes, nine individual organs because the lungs are two kidneys and liver can be split. So nine lives can be saved. So the longest on the waiting list right now has been kidneys, even though the opportunity is the greatest. In other words, there's more kidney donations than any other organ, but the waiting list for kidneys, I believe right now is 80 plus thousand of the waiting list.

And the waiting list is 116,000 right now, all together, all Oregon. So the vast majority, like I said, or kidneys, the good thing about the kidneys is you've got dialysis. They can be dialized for some time. Now the bad thing about it is every year on dialysis takes a significant toll and shortens your lifespan offered by some of each year up to seven years.

So, but they can go a little longer. The lungs are a little more rare just because it's so easy to get lung infections from the donor side because all the other organs are encapsulated. They're all in sterile environments, not as much potential for infections, but the lungs or even though they're you're ventilated, but they're open to air and of course in an ICU setting, so it's easier to transmit the monias and things like that. So the lungs are much more difficult to be able to transplant.

But again, the list isn't quite as long as the kidney list. So that's kind of why the kidneys are at the wait sometimes. Sure. The other thing about the kidneys, there's so many different diseases that affect the kidneys that cause kidney failure, including hypertension and diabetes, especially here in Louisiana.

We're kind of known for that and hypertension being so silent. A lot of people don't know they have it and it's negatively impacting the kidney. So a lot of people end up with kidney disease more often. And Rishi, I have a neat story when it comes to kidney donation.

I think it is. I have so much to tell you Rishi. Oh, I'm gonna say too. So we have some volunteers who work with us and she needed a kidney.

Katrina came, they had to move from New Orleans here. I'm sure you remember that in the headlines. The waiting list for the kidney was so long. She was so sick.

She went to a living donation. Her family was tested. Nobody was a match. And so one of her friends and they were in the ministry together said, I'm going to go and get tested.

And she said, I don't know you that well. Right? And so he said, I need to do this. So he went.

He was a perfect match. So he gave her one of his kidneys. And then later they married. So they're celebrating 14 years of transplantation, successful transplantation this year and 11 years of marriage.

And on their wedding anniversary, they talk about organellian tissue donation awareness. So we always have dinner or some kind of fun event where we get folks to talk about it and hopefully sign up to be donors. So it doesn't happen to every case list. Let's not, you know, if you give somebody a kidney, we're not gonna promise marriage here, but it worked out in that case.

Sure. You know, talking about emergencies, like, for example, in that horrific incident that occurred in Las Vegas, I heard that they're having a shortage on blood. And so once again, this kind of goes back to thank goodness for Noda creating the organization behind this process. Because I imagine like incidents like Hurricane Katrina, incidents that you can't account for, that must really put a shock to the system.

All of a sudden, there's this big increase in people who need life saving organs. Right. And of course, cause a significant shock into the logistics of everything. So I was in fact on site on a case during Katrina, as it was about to make landfall.

And I can tell you firsthand, complete communications fail and everything else fails, but we were able to lean on the OPTN on UNOS, who actually is the, and I mentioned OPTN, but UNOS is United Network of Argan sharing. Okay. They're the contractor. They're the ones, they're the keeper of OPTN.

So I was able to punt basically to UNOS because I was not able to have communications and be able to allocate. So we punt at the UNOS and they were able to still make life happen, as we say, and we were able to still transplant multiple different people and help that family and that donor still be a hero, even in times of tragedy. So you're right that having that node, you know, being in place and having that system so well in place is huge, especially in times of need. Sure.

You know, in an ideal situation, well, I'm saying ideal, but when it's not, you know, a big shock to the system after a emergency such as that one, who's reviewing the list and, you know, saying that this person is more needed than the other or, you know, most needed right now, is there like metrics and that kind of thing that goes into that? That's a great question and that is actually exactly it. So there are metrics you can't just say because every transplant surgeon would say, no, my patient is sicker than your patient. If it was just subjective, right, each organ has an allocation score.

Okay. Each organ except for the kidney and I'll tell you that in a second, but say, for instance, the lungs and the liver, you have this certain calculation that calculates how much longer this person can live with this organ. The person with the shortest amount of time gets put highest on the list. So there's no subjectivity there.

Okay. Now the kidneys, because you have dialysis, it's a little different where it's more time on dialysis because they know each year on dialysis takes years off your life. So it's still again, objective, very metric oriented. For people who want to support organ donation, you mentioned there's the register me org, right?

People want to be involved. Right. So register me org. What state you're in, you can register your wishes to be an organ, I and tissue donor there.

Okay. Great. And all right. Well, that's all the questions I had.

Thank you all very much for joining me and doing this dual podcast experiment. Yeah, we like that. It was on the hot seat. It was awesome.

But listen, appreciate you. We enjoy your podcast as well. It's called healthy schmelty and I found it on my podcast app on my phone. Easy peasy.

Easy peasy. That shows a term there, but I look that up. But if people want more information on you, where would you like us to send them? Please send them to reishib.com and you can find more information about my podcast.

I have such entertaining episodes as my interview with the CEO of Squatty Potty and I have a discussion about earbuds versus headphones, which one is better for your ears. And I have one coming up with the gifted life podcast. Oh, that sounds interesting. All right.

All right. So when you say reishib.com, what's the spelling? I'm gonna say reishib.com. Thank you for reminding me to spell that out.

I forgot not everyone is an idiot guy. So that's R-I-S-H-I-B-E-E dot com. If you want more, you are the fanciest schmansiest little podcast right there when it comes to health and wellness, man. We appreciate you.

I appreciate you as well. And your site is lopa.org. Is that correct? L-O-P-A dot org lopa dot org.

It's a one stop shop for organ donation information. As we do in every episode of the gifted life podcast, we like to honor a hero. Today's hero is Jean LeBour. And we learn about Jean from his family.

He was a beloved husband, father, pop, and friend. Throughout his life, Jean formed friendships with those he came in contact, his sense of humor and playful wit, and dared into family friends and acquaintances. He had compassion and concern for people, and often spent time building, planting, mowing, artinkering on things. He was well known for his willingness to help others.

He was truly a kind and loving man who treasured his family and had a great love for all creatures. His daughters were with him as he passed from this life. They told him it was okay to go because he had three great sons in law. But he knew what would take really good care of his friends.

Jean was challenged in this nature, led to his decision to become a donor. Jean served in the US Air Force, US Army, and US Navy. He served his country with pride and enthusiasm from 1950 until 63. He received several awards for his skill and expertise in various capacities, radar operator, mechanical engineer, and military police.

Upon honorable discharge, he was employed as a diesel mechanic for various companies, and received commendations and appreciation from being the most sought after mechanic. He later retired from Allied Systems in 92 on retirement. He was as busy as ever, serving the needs of his wife, children, family, and friends. He filled so many lives with love.

And now we pause and say thank you to Jean for the gift of life. In our question and answer segment here on the gifted life, interesting question that we thought we could talk about here on the gifted life. Joey, you were involved in a case. This question came up and it was one that we hadn't fielded before and was that we needed help.

That's right, Lori. We've talked before, often about direct donation and the impact that it has with donor families, knowing someone who possibly might need another organ, say they know someone who needs a kidney, for instance. So they ask us to see if we could facilitate that donation process. We do everything in our power to see that that happens.

And the question came up in a recent case where I was one of the administrators on call, the clinician involved as this family knows someone who needs a co-neo transplant. Do you think that's something is the right donation here? So of course, me being all not knowing that I have no idea. But we know people who do.

But we have for it. So fortunately, we've been able to get one of the experts here in studio here with us, Ms. Joy Russell, who is the executive director of Southern Eye Bank in South Louisiana. So I'll go ahead and pose that question to you, Joy, since it was asked of me and I really had no idea.

Thank you all for having me on. Yes, direct donation for cornea tissue is a possibility. It is very rare, but it certainly can happen. And what needs to happen is you need to confirm with the surgeon who's caring for the person that would be designated as the recipient by the family that their need would be met by the donation.

So once we have the proper paperwork filled out and we contact the surgeon to make sure that he or she feels it will meet the needs of his patient or her patient, then we move forward and educate the potential recipient and make sure they understand that this would speed up when they would have surgery. And once everything is in place, because it is a time sensitive issue with donation, then we get the ball rolling and they evaluate the tissue and try and make it happen. And in my experience with Southern Eye Bank, we have had one case in many, many years. Wow.

And in organ donation, of course, it is also time sensitive. You know, it's not really any organ band. It's very similar. Yeah.

Now, from a matching standpoint, you know, there's a lot of things that have to go into the matching for kidneys or lungs, you know, antigen matching that blood has to match. Is that a concern when you have someone who designates potential recipient for cornea? We are lucky that a cornea tissue is considered universal because it is an avascular tissue, which means it is not does not have a blood source. So you do not have to match blood type or age or size, anything along those lines.

You are able to be a universal donor. So it sounds like, you know, as long as the owner family would have someone that they know needs a corneal transplant has already started the process with a surgeon of getting a transplant within a particular timeframe. It sounds like pretty much go in that case. Right.

I would imagine that people are just not educated on the fact that they could request such a donation. And because there is no longer awaiting list for cornea tissue, people are able to have their medical needs met more quickly that you don't wait, but you can certainly designate who you would like your loved ones tissue to go to if that's a desire of the family. So when you do have a corneal donation that is not asked as far as directed, would you share with us how you work with families wanting to communicate with the recipients? Or I guess I should say your recipients wanting to communicate with donor family.

Right. That conversation can go both ways. It can be initiated by either the recipient or by the donor family. In my experience, the donor family usually would like to communicate to the recipient family and have a conversation.

It needs to be something agreed upon by both parties. And we usually are the middlemen in the beginning. We ask, let's say it's a donor family. We ask them to write a letter and send it to us, the Southern Eye Bank, and we then send it on to the recipient.

And if they are interested in responding, they send back to us and then we connect to the dots. And then we can facilitate them actually directly meeting with one another. We do. We have a celebration once every year in March called the gift of sight and we invite both sides of that equation.

Donor families and recipient families. And if they are interested in meeting face to face, that's an opportunity where it can happen. We also provide education and small handouts with all of our surgeons so that we give them step by step instructions. It's also on our website and how they can reach out if they're a donor or a recipient.

So that question that came in is directed donation possible for corneas? Ms. Joy, the simple answer is yes, of course. And we would love to help facilitate it at any time.

And now we know that's an option. You would like more Southern Eye Bank.org is your one stop shop, Southern Eye Bank.org. Ms. Joy, it's a pleasure.

Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. I appreciate it. And maybe you have a question info at lopa.org.

We'd love to hear from you. And don't forget, you can always reach us at 5046483477. If you'd like some more information regarding what Joy has just spoken about or if you have other questions that you would like to ask us, please give us a call. Another episode of the Get to Life Guys.

Guess what? In the books. I thought we were going to be like a chorus. I said it.

Because it has come to a close. And we got to thank our guest. He got us all healthy and healthy and healthy and learned about Organized Edition. Hopefully his listeners will learn to make an educated decision as well when it comes to donation.

So thank you. Many thanks to Sean Paul for sharing with us about the trail run that will be in Karen Crow. All about bringing nature, horses, organ donation awareness to the forefront. Really looking forward to that.

And many thanks to him for sharing that information with us. And for going outside of his normal job title to bring that home. A donation specialist part of him. And we also want to thank Joy Roselli, executive director of Southern Eye Bank for sharing with us that in fact direct donation in cornea transplant is a thing.

Who knew? That's what this podcast is all about learning. Yeah. So we're glad when you ask us those questions and then if we don't know then we find those who do.

And so they're great partners for us. We love that and together we help to make life happen. Hopefully you are inspired to go out and register as an organi and tissue donor if you are not already. Register me dot org.

That's a great place to start. It's quick. It's easy. Make a decision today.

And by all means, please go out and do something that you don't normally do to help us make life happen. Thanks. This is a production of the Louisiana Organ for a Kerman Agency.