Hello and welcome to the gifted life podcast where we have conversations about organ tissue and eye donation. I'm Lori Steele and I'm Joey Boudreau and we are so glad that you choose to tune in. Thank you so much. And Joey, I get so excited with folks telling us, hey, I listened to the podcast or I did something that I don't normally do in order to help you guys save lives.
So some of my friends said, Hey, I saw you guys posted something on donate life, Louisiana, and I shared it. And I don't normally do that. We appreciate that because that's new eyes seeing that information. And then if you know about the podcast, we had one person sitting in an email saying, Hey, did you know that they had a podcast?
Can you share this with your office? And that is amazing. So thanks to that one person, more people who didn't normally know about donation talk about donation are now. So we thank you and we know that you out there listening can do at least one thing to make a difference too.
Yeah, it's easy. You can find us on iTunes or whatever your favorite podcast app is or you can look us up on lop.org slash podcast. But the most important thing is find us and tell people about us. Yeah.
And so, you know, we're high tech. So we have the Facebook Instagram Twitter. We have these podcasts going on. So you can basically find us anywhere.
Donate life, Louisiana. That's on Facebook at donate life. That's Twitter Instagram. So use that spread the word.
We love the help and we love that you're our partner and helping to save more lives. So do what you can do something different that you don't normally do and we appreciate it coming up on this episode. Some fun events. So if you're thinking about volunteering, you hadn't been the bullet yet and jumped in.
Hey, great events coming up. We want you to take part in in the recovery segment. We'll talk a little bit about the historical perspective and the standardized practice of brain death declaration. And we love being out in the community and we have an event coming up.
Are you a golfer? I am a golfer. I'm almost scratched. Are you?
Is that good? Hey, so we got something for all of you, golfers out there and maybe Joey too. I'm going to have to do some research, but it's also going to help us save lives. We'll tell you how.
And in technology, we'll talk about advances in lung preservation and how that's making an impact on increasing lung transplantation. Okay. We always pause to say thank you for the gift of life for one of our amazing heroes. So we'll do that as well.
And of course, we'll be answering your questions. And much more here on the gift of life podcast. Joey, hold on to your hats. Are you ready?
I'm holding. So many events coming up all with organization awareness at the center coming up on October 3rd, the first Saturday in October. It's the fifth annual. If you can believe it, the fifth annual Roble Run for Life.
So we are ecstatic. It's in the Baton Rouge area. So if you're a walker, a runner, or if you like me, you watch people walk and run. This is for you.
We're looking for sponsors, runners, door prizes, teams. It's just an inspiring day. We honor our heroes and we want you to get involved. So if you know of anybody in the Baton Rouge area who wants to get involved, now's the time.
We're always looking for volunteers and they always say, let us know when something's coming up. Well, hey, let's get a team together, right? You've been there before. I have.
I was there last year. It was a really fun time. You know, and like you said, it was a lot of different skill levels of runners. The feedback that I got was everybody had a good time.
It was a good time to have all. And it was a day to celebrate life. So mark your calendar October 3rd. Here's something else.
This is a little bit different than some of the other runs out there, but it's the trail run, which you are part of. Joey, this is the second annual. Right. I was part of the first one.
We had this past winter and it was a huge success. It was a little chilly, but it was great. It's a different, like you said, a different type of run. It's a trail run.
And we have Sean Paul Harrison on the line. He's our physician and donation specialist. And of course, the brain trust behind the first annual trail run for life. Hey, Sean Paul.
Hey guys. How's it going? I'm asking all about this trail run, which is coming up. And is there like a spooky theme because of the date here?
No, we actually moved it up a little bit because last year was a little bit cold. We are going to have a lot of events for all the participants and the kids that are coming out. So let me sit down for a minute because I get pretty excited about it. Yes.
Go ahead. Passion. You know, the local team in the community educated, they've always done an amazing job organizing these events and fundraisers. And we just wanted to follow suit with what they do.
And this one's a little bit different. In fact, there's about 100 races indicating an area each year. And there's only about a handful of trail runs. And it's held at Cherokee Ridge, where it's a long and character.
It's an amazing, beautiful breathtaking place with just hundreds of acres and rolling heels. And one of the best courses I've ever experienced. But, you know, our main mission is just to celebrate the heroes, their families, and the recipients, and educating the Build a Stronger community. So we are blessed and thankful that we can actually have a second annual.
We were really nervous in a good way last year about having a new event. But we were just blown away by the support from all the sponsors and everybody that attended. We had over 200 registered participants, which was something that we were not expecting. And we just had a lot of great things.
There's a lot of different contests. We have largest team, best team uniform. We even had a beard contest. Right.
And we had a day RB. So it was just a wonderful thing. And as a matter of fact, the owner of the horse barn, who has no connection to the donation, the next morning actually called me and he asked me if you could schedule a second annual. So he was really touched by all the different families that came out there with support.
He was a very intimate setting afterwards that they shared the story. And there was a lot of people that did not know anything about the nation that walked away, making sure that they were noted on her. Oh, and we love it. And so, Sean Paul, I'm not a runner.
I used to work out every day though, that counts, Joey. I'm not sure. But so what's the difference between like a regular run? Like we have these five Ks and we see that and then a trail run.
So is it just like you get to take the scenic route or what? Yeah, Lori, the biggest difference is just the terrain that you're running on. You know, you're going through some rolling hills and around ponds and through the wooded areas. And actually where we had it in to is through the stables is where the big finish line is.
So you get to just experience the entire acreage and where this is anything held. Just heard how beautiful it was. So October 31st. October 31st.
Got it. We are writing it down, saving the date. Lopa.org, if you go to news and events, you'll know more about this. And you can actually see pictures from last year.
So Sean Paul, we appreciate the extra effort and all the lives saved because of this new event. We appreciate you. Thanks for having me. So that's always fine.
The trail run, that's going to be October 31st. We're basically got your whole October full. Oh, wait, there's one more. Get yourself in shape.
Golfers. This was a good one. The golfer life, Justin Harrison's golfer life. This is an October as well.
We're going to be busy. Yes, we will. I love it. So we're going to learn more about the golfer life.
If you're a golfer, Joey, maybe pretty good. Okay, we'll check. So all of that and more. Yeah, but if you want to sign up and you're always saying, Hey, I want to help out.
How can I help out? These are some of the events that you can attend, lend a helping hand, help spread the word. That's what we're looking for. You'll see a orange circle on the home page volunteer click it.
Fill out your information. That information goes to the community educator nearest you get involved today here on the gifted life. We've reached our recovery segment and today we're going to talk a little bit in depth about brain death studies. I'm out in the community.
There's a lot of folks who say there's so many people who are registered in Louisiana over 2.2 million. Why aren't there enough donors? So that's because it's rare to die of brain death, right? Right.
Less than 2% of hospital deaths result in brain death. First of all, obviously you have to suffer a brain injury of some sorts, whether it's a trauma like a gunshot wound or a car accident or it may not be a trauma, might just be like a stroke. But either way you have to suffer some sort of brain injury. Before mechanical ventilators were invented, brain death didn't exist because when someone suffered a brain injury and that resulted in what would have been brain death, then that person stopped breathing and then of course shortly after the heart stops beating.
So that person would have been determined cardiac death anyway. So that was the only way to determine death prior to the early 1900s in the invention of mechanical ventilation. But since the invention of mechanical ventilation, oftentimes physicians would realize that a patient seemed to be in a coma but would never come out of it. And they realized that that's when of course a lot of different physician groups got together to try to figure out what this phenomenon was.
And in 1968, the Harvard Ad-Hoc Committee produced the standard practice for determining the termination of brain death. It was at that point where brain death was a true actual diagnosis. So since that point, the diagnosis has, you know, some of the testing that they've done has improved a little bit. But the basic premise behind it is that all 12 cranial nerves must not be functioning.
You know, you have 12 cranial nerves there and they do a series of clinical tests like a corneal reflex, like a blink reflex or a pupil response, a call for a gag, breathing. Breathing is the big one that they'll check. They'll take the patient off of the vent later, they'll remove the vent and see if the patient breathes. And that's usually the last brain stem reflex to go.
And along with a couple of other tests, once those are all completed and if that person did not have any of those responses, then that person would be declared brain dead. And that is just as much death as cardiac death. In the last few years especially, you know, they've always, they've had EEGs for quite some time, but they've really started pushing other ancillary tests like tests that show blood flow to the brain. So it's an additional test to the clinical tests or there's a couple of different ways with an angiogram and with a nuclear med.
But they're really used a little bit more often now, just as an additional test to help when they are declaring someone brain dead. But it's a whole lot that goes into it obviously. You know, it's a very, very important diagnosis and they go through all the steps necessary to make sure and confirm this diagnosis. Yeah, well, I hope you learned a little bit more.
I did as well, especially historical data and stuff. And that's what we try to do is bring those things to the forefront so that we can have those healthy conversations about donation. Did you hear something you want to learn more about or you want us to touch on another subject? Info at lopa.org.
All right, we have reached our community segment here on the gifted life podcast and we teased it earlier, calling all golfers, right, including Joey, which he tells us he's pretty good. I knew proof. Okay. I hoping that's positive.
But we are talking about an event coming up in October to help spread awareness about donation. And this one's close to our hearts, Justin Harrison's golf for life. So we talked about Justin on an earlier podcast. We have Justin's mom on the phone now.
She is an organ donation advocate, has been for years. Miss Libby Harrison, how are you? I'm terrific. How are you guys?
We are good. Do you know about Joey's golfing abilities? You know, I'm not going to come out. That's a smart lady smart lady right there.
You know, very busy. Yeah, I'm busy during the tournament. So he's out there playing while working. That was a safe answer.
I'm spreading the word while I'm out there. That's right. We love it. And so you may be able to tell by our conversation and joking that we know Libby, we have known Libby for a long time.
We love Libby and she actually got me involved in organ donation and had me sign up to be an organ donor years ago. So very close to our hearts and we appreciate you joining us. But we do want to talk about Justin Harrison's golf for life because when we talk about Justin Harrison, I think blue eyes, this guy who was forward thinking he knew about organ donation before it was cool to know about organ donation, right? He did.
He did. He's the one that had our family talking about it. And he is a hero himself. We talk about him all the time in our presentations just across the state.
You do that as well. And I love how you just light up when you talk about your baby. Joey talks about it too. Like when you talk about Justin, it's like something comes over you and you just got to tell as many people as possible, right?
I do. And I just load the way y'all let me just tell these stories over and over and over. You hear a smiley like he did. I love it.
I love it. I love it. We love that lives. Now let's talk about this golf for life.
It has Justin's name on it. Our goal is to save as many lives as possible. And we're trying to just reach a different audience. And this is an event that really attracts a lot of attention.
It's one of the best golf tournaments in Lafayette. It really is. We get a lot of positive feedback of how fun the tournament is and how fair the tournament is and the prizes are. We get cash prizes.
Growth and net for first and third place. Lots of food. I was telling you about the food you say you say you're going. So it's coming up on the 12th.
It's coming up on October 12th. Everybody could go to lopa.org news and events. You'll be able to learn a little bit more about it. But Libby, we just want to talk about why this was started.
And for folks who want to get involved, what is it all about? Well, ultimate goal of the tournament is, of course, to raise awareness and to help all those folks in need of a transplant. But it's also a fundraiser. I mean, being nonprofit, we depend on our fundraisers quite a bit to fund our the ways that we can support our donor families and in our education program.
So it's very important that people understand that this is a fund raiser, not just a trine that's a raiser. And we do have teams that three man scramble and it's $600 a team to an all the player. You can have a team are a single and we'll put you with somebody. But there is also a hole in one vehicle, which is sponsored by Hampton Toyota.
Very good friends and great supporters of Lopa for years. And Charlie G is actually furnishing the dinner that evening. Yeah. So we have a lot of support here in Acadiana.
People are really good to us. We will also have a pretty fun rattle that is in itself a fundraiser. And our first place is going to be a customized Saint pioneer scooter. I don't know that much about scooters, but I've seen it.
And it's a pretty cool old thing. It's a great little luggage rack comes with a helmet. So maybe a college student. Yeah, maybe a college student get around on campus.
It would be terrific. And then we have a George Rodriguez, the Blue Dog Press is our kind of place. And then the golf connection has donated a golf driver for third place. And then one of Justin's friends actually does the PR work for the state.
So she's getting us some signs. I think it ought to be. Power packed for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. So we have lots going on for that day, not just a golf tournament. So if you don't play golf, it's still fun to come out and maybe you'll win a scooter or a luxury cramp. Joey's claiming the scooter.
So if you could just make sure. I'm holding a bunch of rattle tickets. Sure, that's handled properly. Yeah.
Right. So this is the eighth annual. Are you just in all of the people who want to learn about donation? Once they'll end the facts, say yes, people who support the things that we are doing.
I mean, at night, kind of when everything kind of settles for the day, I'm sure your heart is happy. It's very happy. And as the years each year, it seems like more and more of our golfers are staying for the social gathering afterwards, because we do have donor families and recipients sharing their experience with donation. And it lets these people who are helping by participating in the tournament.
It lets them see exactly what they are supporting. Everybody walks away knowing that it's going to matter and it's going to make a difference. And these folks are getting involved in this tournament truly do help statewide. Wow.
And we appreciate all that you do. As Joey said, one of our earlier podcast, you kind of lead the way for us with your passion, you inspire. And we thank you. I don't have to make me cry.
We love you. I'm pretty inspired about you with y'all. Y'all are amazing. I get so much support from all of my local crew.
It's a pretty incredible group of folks that I work with. So thank you. Pretty cool family to be a part of. We appreciate your time and attention to detail.
If you want more about the golf tournament, I want to get those tickets that we talked about, registration, those kinds of things, info at lopa.org info at lopa.org. We'll get you what you need to know. This is one of those events that we say, Hey, you want to think outside of the box and do something to help us save lives? This may be your ticket.
Today, we are talking about a cool gadget that allows us to save more lives, always love hearing about new technology, Joey. And then I always say in my presentation, space on the community, we're doing this today. But who knows what will happen tomorrow because so many things are happening, especially in technological age that we are in. So there's a machine that helps with lungs.
It increases lung availability and so much more, which is just pretty neat in itself. It is. And this machine you're talking about is called XVivo. It's a lung perfusion machine that it kind of looks like a dome, but it's glassed around.
So you can see, you know, the lungs as you put them onto this machine, you can see how they're functioning and how basically how they're working. I guess to do a little bit of the backstory of the wise, as we had spoken about before in previous episodes, you know, it doesn't you don't have a lot of time to have the lungs off or outside of the body. You really only have about three or four hours from blood flow to blood flow. So you're, you're range where you can safely transplant someone safely transport the lungs to transplant someone is not that far, you know, but what these, this perfusion, lung perfusion machine has made available is to be able to extend that time period.
To actually close to seven or eight hours oftentimes or even beyond that. And what it is, is this kind of a dome looking machine, a dome like machine that they'll recover the lungs and then you hook them up to this machine similar to what I mentioned before on the kidney perfusion, the kidney pumps. But this machine, they can then start treating the lungs to improve the function. So you can even take lungs that were previously maybe not quite perfect at the time.
Maybe of course it would have to be an acute issue. It would have to be something that was fixable. I mean, it can't be something that, you know, like a COPD or a passema lungs, but if it's something like saying ammonia, you know, that's a temporary thing. You can put them on this machine and they can then start treating with antibiotics and other treatments, drying the lungs out where you can't necessarily do in the body because you don't want to affect the kidneys.
You know, there's only so much that you can do in the body. This lung machine, you don't have to worry about anything else but the lungs. So they can take lungs that are marginal initially and then turn them into perfect ideal lungs for their potential recipients. So it sounds like we're buying more time and we're saving more lives.
Absolutely. Buying more time and saving more lives. That's what it's about. It's unfathomable.
I mean, it's too high. This hopefully as it continues to become more widespread will decrease that number by a ton. Wow. Look what technology can do in the donation world, improving outcomes, transplanting more.
I love it. It is time now for us to just take some time to talk about an extraordinary human, a hero and organ donor. Today we have the spotlight on Christian Nelson. Christian Nelson was born in 1994.
Mom and Dad say he was so fun. He was loved by many. He was generous. He was kind.
Her friends say how handsome he was and how giving he was. He was the first baby. He was the first great grandchild. And they say he was just first at a lot of things.
There was a pattern starting there with this guy. And in May 2013, he was a college student. He was 19. He had a part time job.
Joey, you remember being in college and trying to earn a little bit of extra money. He was working at a warehouse. There was an accident. Mom and Dad got word that he had fallen.
He was unconscious. He was unresponsive. And Mom and Dad said within 24 hours he was declared brain dead. He had a heart and his license.
His decision. Mom remembers him saying, why wouldn't you do that? They were so proud of his decision and the fact that he was able to save lives, that they wanted to scream at from the rooftops. They wanted everybody to know.
So they worked with us. We put it out on social media. The story was out there. They had his face.
His story. Here's what's happening. And he did save lives. And you actually were able to be there with his mom and dad, Hans and Jen, when they met one of the recipients.
Right. It was one of the most memorable moments of my Loba career. When a couple of years ago they were able to meet at Ochner where Kaitlyn, the heart recipient, had gotten his transplant. And in fact, you know, one of our Loba employees, one of our fellow employees asked, look, can we use your stethoscope?
And I said, well, yeah, I mean, I don't use it as much anymore. I knocked the dust off of it. And it told me what it was for, you know, so that she can, Jen can listen, both Hans and Jen can listen to Kaitlyn's heartbeat. I said, oh, my goodness, absolutely.
And I need to be there. So, so of course I made the trip to come for the meeting. And it was just a beautiful tear jerking, emotional time. And I remember it very vividly.
Like she put my stethoscope on and, and then like, I was a pause and I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, I hope my stethoscope works. And then, and then she moved it over just for a second. And then she just broke down into tears. And every single person in the place broke down into tears with her.
I remember the picture. And you could just see the emotion and that picture in Kaitlyn had been an all state football player. He waited for that gift of life. And they said that they were just kind of similar in personalities and nature and you always see Kaitlyn with that big smile.
But Hans and Jen said meeting Kaitlyn was an experience unlike any other. They're so proud of that legacy. But Christian not only saved Kaitlyn's life, three other lives as well gave sight to two people and enhance lives through tissue donation. They continue to be organ donation advocates.
They are media personalities. So they take to the airwaves to talk about organ donation. And they also plan a cruise with proceeds coming back to Lopo so that we can spread awareness so just a great family who just wants to honor their hero, their loved one and they want to save more lives and you got to love it. So at this point we're going to take time to pause and we just want to say thank you to Christian Nelson for the gifts of life.
We have reached the question and answers that but here on the Gifted Life podcast and we always love when you send us questions or maybe you saw something that you wanted to talk about or there was just something that's been in your brain and you wanted answered and we tried to do the best we can here. The question that came into info at Lopo.org, Joey, when someone is a living donor who pays for the donor's surgery. Well, that's a great question. I've gotten it to the recipients insurance company actually pays for both of course the transplanted side and the donor side in these cases.
So, so the recipients insurance company takes care of both sides of the costs in these situations. So it doesn't come from the donors insurance company. All right. And there you have it.
You know, we get questions about all types of donation. We want you to be able to have those answers to help spread the facts info at Lopo.org. If you want more Joey, we have reached the end of episode 10. Episode 10.
I like that. And we appreciate you guys for listening to us and we hope that you choose to spread the word. Let people know where they can find us. Tell them about the gifted life and look, schools are starting up.
Lopo.org.speaker. If you know of a teacher that could use us in their classroom, we work with them with their schedule. We're very flexible. If you have a student that attends a school and maybe we can do a group session or something like that, let us know.
Lopo.org.speaker. Tell us where you are. We'll come and we'll work with you to get that done. But please do something today that you hadn't done to help spread the word.
And we want to thank our special guest on this episode as well. Absolutely, Laura. We want to thank Trump, all Harrison, who's heading up the trail run for life and also Libby Harrison for honoring Justin again, you know, Justin Harrison's golf for life. What you want to for actually two wonderful events.
Yeah. And so we do have these events coming up. The ones that we kind of highlighted are for October. These are coming up.
You can mark your calendar and we just need all kinds of talent. Can you hand out food? Can you help us pick up trash or put up banners? Can you help tell the runners which direction to run in?
That's a fun one because you cheer them on. Or fill water, cups and things like that. There are so many things to do or just spread the word on social media. Tell a running club.
Tell somebody that know about it. There are so many things that you can do but try to get involved and try to help us make life happen. Thanks again for listening. We hope to catch you next time here on the gifted life.
Bye.