Oh, and welcome to the gifted live podcast where we have conversations about organ tissue and eye donation. I'm Laurie Steele. And I'm Joey Boudreau. And we are so glad that you are tuning in.
Thank you so much. And Joey, one of the things that I get really excited about is when we get new people joining our team, people who just want to help us save lives, have a donor mom who just joined the team and she said, I don't really know what I can bring to the table, but I'm thinking I can do this. I have a Facebook page. Can I help?
Well, absolutely. She's going to help us spread the word and we hope that you listening help us spread the word too. Absolutely spread the word. It's really easy to find us.
It's up on iTunes, but any of your favorite podcast apps are just go on lopa.org slash podcast. Yes, that easy. And a lot of things that we talk about, you'll see on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter pages. So look us up there as well.
Donate life, Louisiana. We want to give you as much information as possible. We hope that we educate you and we hope that we prompt you to have those healthy conversations about donation. We want to save as many lives as possible and we need as many partners as we can.
Today on this episode in the news, we will be talking about essence. It was power packed the party with a purpose. How did donate life fit in? We'll fill you in.
We're going to talk a little bit about direct donation and really its impact and one of the one of the big stories that made national news. Yeah, in our community segment, we always talk about Joey one person making a difference. Well one person and the rest of the family getting together. Man, what an impact that can have to.
We'll talk about it in our technology segment. We'll talk a little bit about Transnet, which is a new technology that's been used in shipping companies, but it allows a better labeling and transportation of organs. We'll also pause to say thank you for the gift of life to one of our amazing heroes. Plus we'll take your questions and answers.
Yeah, all that and more right here on the gifted life. In our new segment today, Joey, I'm so excited because we are still basically on a high from the essence festival in New Orleans. What a party. That was a big party.
There were over 200,000 people that attended this year. It was amazing. And party with a purpose. They always say the community organizers, it's community focus, which is one of the reasons why we are always there.
Another reason why we are always there is because this hot mama here, Ms. Cheryl McGee-Heals, she is a community educator in the New Orleans area and make sure that we are where we need to be to be able to save more lives. Are you recovered from this party with a purpose, ma'am? No.
Don't recover. Tell us about it. It was absolutely amazing. You know, meeting people from all over the United States, seeing people you haven't seen in a long time.
And again, party with the purpose. We work hard, but yet it's a good time sharing the news about organ donation. All right, so Joey, she said she worked hard. We know because every year we come away with new people joining our Louisiana registry saying, yes, to organ donation.
Do you know how many Cheryl and her team? I'm sure it was a lot because I heard it was a good turnout. Yeah, Cheryl. It was a great turnout.
General, please. We had over 300 people signed up. Oh, go ahead. Yes.
Oh, go ahead. Yes. Imagine the lives that can be saved. And then we got out there spreading awareness.
So you were out there, yet new volunteers, you had volunteers who have been with us for a while. Tell us about it. Well, this was a great year because not only we had one booth, we had two and going in there concerned about volunteers, I was just amazed, our season volunteers and then yet our new volunteers and then calling back this week saying, you know, we want to be part of it next year. But hearing the stories of the heart recipients, the kidney recipient, the liver recipient, the lung recipient, if there was any doubt that organ donation is a gift, just look at our volunteers.
Just amazing. Amazing. So we talked to some of those out there, brought that audio back so that you can share with our podcast audience. So let's take a listen.
We're here at 2015 Essence Fest and live here today, we have Beverly and Keenan Shields. Keenan received a heart transplant a couple of months ago and Keenan, we just want to say thank you for being out here with us. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I am a New Orleans police detective for 20 some more years and I experienced heart attacks beginning right after Katrina.
Within a year of being treated at Ashna, I was placed on the transbandance. Finally, I want to receive a new heart January the 25th. So right now it's five months, both transbandance. Yeah, thank God.
We are faithful. We are God-fearing people and we know that God is going to provide all our needs and we've been standing on him and we continue to stand on him. We're glad to have you and part of our local team and I tell you what, why are you here volunteering today? It's very important for me, actually me, myself, my wife, my family, that people actually know and learn how important it is to become an organ donor, how they can actually make a difference in someone's life by becoming an organ donor.
A lot of people just not educated on it, so I want to do my part, we want to do our part and give them back. And it's nothing like, nothing beats giving at all. We're at Essence Fest today. My name is Sharon Raymond, community educator with Louisiana Oregon Procurement Agency and we have set up our booth at the Essence Fest and we are here today with some of our volunteers and I have with me today a heart recipient.
Could you tell us your name? Amanda Moore. And how long have you had your heart transplant? I've had it for six years now.
So you look top not 100 percent, so how you feel? I feel great. What made you decide to volunteer with us today? Well, I've been coming to some of the meetings and stuff and I feel like I should give back and I feel honored to just help out and inform people about Oregon donations.
Great. Have you ever been to Essence before? No, this is my first time. Okay, well we're here in Fort Street.
Who do you have with you today? I have my mom with me, Erica. She looks like she's a great support. Yes ma'am.
I'm glad to see you all too out here today and we thank you so much for coming out. Wow, some amazing stories. We appreciate you bringing that back to us, Cheryl, so we can just have a piece of what was going out there at Essence Festible. I understand that these stories and more helped you make some real connections.
Made amazing connections. You know, Keenan Shields had been a police officer for over 22 years, 400 attacks and there he is out there sharing his story and getting more people to sign up. It was amazing because looking at him and not knowing his background, people was just brought to the table. I want to be an organ donor.
Amanda, another heart recipient. Very quiet, but when you ask her to share her story, that brought even more people to the table and answered a lot of questions and cleared some of those misconceptions about the organ donation. So I really appreciate our volunteers and I'm looking forward to seeing them again next month at our meeting and it's just great for LOPA and the community and hold to have that connection, not only with Essence, but our volunteers. And Cheryl, to add to that, I bet it must make just the biggest impact on those that maybe on the fence, they see organ donations a good thing, but it's still a scary thing, you know, and to be able to put the faces right in front of them and knowing that Keenan just a few months later is doing well, has to make a big impact on them saying yes to donation.
Well, we always say it takes one person, one person to make a difference. Well, you saw that how many times out there? Oh, countless times, countless times. And not only have Keenan, but we had six recipients on one day.
Yes. And you could not deny that life is precious. Thanks a ton to those recipients that came out and volunteered and especially thanks to Essence, not only for letting us take part in the festival, but they featured us twice in the magazine this year and it was very, very special of them to do it. Their commitment to meeting the needs of the community and ultimately saving more lives.
It's just so huge. And I would love to be back in our same spot next year, but thanks to Gina Montana. She's been with us, a partner from the beginning with Essence. And she's always looking out for us to make sure we have the right spot, loading our material in.
And Gina, thank you for everything that you do at Essence and we're looking forward to 2016 experience with you. Thank you, Gina. We love our partners. And thanks to you for all the hard work.
We know Sharon was out there as well. Thanks to all those volunteers who said, yes, I'd like to volunteer. And look, this was a fun event, but Cheryl, as community educators, we know more fun events to come, right? Always looking.
Always looking. Always looking. Calling all volunteers. So if you haven't taken a step to volunteer, you can go to our website, lopa.org.org.
There's an orange circle that says, volunteer. Fill out that information no matter where you are in the state. And it will get to one of the community educators that serves where you live, the closest place to you. And we will tell you what's going on, how you can help.
No pressure, right? We try to make it as easy as possible. As fun as possible. Right.
We're looking for you. Looking to hear from you soon. All right. Well, thank you, Ms.
Sheryl. We appreciate you. Sounds like you had a blast. I had a blast.
And you made a difference. Joey, we have reached the recovery segment here on the gifted life. And I mean, I was just inundated with things on my new seat, right? It was this cute little blonde girl, cherub cheeks.
The cutest little thing, I have three little ones of my own. So when I see little babies, I always pause to look at them. And so I see this little girl. And then you see the caption underneath that says, die, but helped after death.
And so I'm really fascinated by this. And all my friends are talking about this cute little girl. Did you see this girl in Facebook? Did you see this article?
Did you see what happened? And so all these people who probably didn't know about donation, click on this article because of that sweet little girl's face, Olivia. And then they learn not only about donation, but more about processes. And the processes.
Just amazing. One little girl. One little girl. And we have talked about direct donation before in a previous episode.
And in the story, it kind of brings it to life. So we have Jessica Roth on the line. She's the clinical services manager for Nebraska. And she and the Nebraska team played an integral part in this story and in making this transplant donation happen.
So Jessica, hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Hi.
Hi. We wanted to talk a little bit. Can you share your experiences about the story and about what you guys did to help facilitate? Yeah.
You know, this opportunity came to us actually in the end of May. The Hapas group actually out in North Platte, Nebraska reached out to us. They told us the story of this little girl who was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. Her mother and father was very interested in potentially helping others through donation.
And it started out more of just an information search looking for more information on donation, donation opportunities and how that would all unfold. A couple of days of having conversations and speaking with the actual physician that was caring for Olivia. And then her whole hospice team, we did actually then speak directly to Olivia's mom, Larissa, who in turn asked them very good questions. She had done quite a bit of research on her own about donation and really felt like this was something that would be very good for their healing process knowing that Olivia was not going to survive this illness.
So in talking about the donation options, it really started out more about tissue donation, heart valves, cornias and research. And Olivia's mom at one point did ask, is there a reason why we can't do organ donation? And of course, all of us had assumed that she was in hospice and not affected to survive, that there was no plan to ever escalate cares to a point that she would be on a ventilator or a breathing machine or anything of that sort to prolong her life. So we had claimed that to do Olivia's mom.
And at that time, she had stated that as well, what if we did reverse the DNR and did decide to go ahead and intubate her and put her on a breathing machine when it came that time? Of course, that was a little bit of a shock and took us all back for a moment. And we did then reconvene with the care team and discussed that situation and those options. And so kind of work through that over the next week, course of week, week and a half with the care team.
The physician that was heading up the hospice care team was really instrumental in kind of laying the groundwork and working with the hospital staff to understand why the parents would want to do this and how important this was to them and really making sure that nobody had any kind of reservations about it. And so we really just followed along with Olivia and through the hospice care team, we did join them on Thursday mornings. We would have an actual care meeting and update everybody on her status. And then we would once a week touch base with Olivia's mother and get an update on her status.
She then in the middle of June, end of June, she did go on her make a wish trip to Orlando. And that's when she, you may have read in the article, she was on the cruise, the Disney cruise. And the one thing that she really wanted to do was kiss the dolphins, swim with the dolphins. And so she did get to do that.
We received a call that afternoon that her status had drastically changed. And actually she had become unresponsive and was in the intensive care unit on the boat on the ship. And then port the following day and we received a call then from, I believe it was Orlando Regional the Children's Unit there. And at that time we had reached out to LifeLink in Orlando and told them of the situation and passed all the information onto them.
We really did not believe that she would be able to get back to Nebraska. But we wanted to make sure that Larissa and her husband's choice for Olivia to be a donor was realized. Two days went by and actually LifeLink out there and then the hospital worked with Disney and make a wish foundation and did make arrangements for her to be life-flited back to Nebraska. It was very important to her family that she was a donor during the Nebraska.
We obviously collaborated with the whole team through that whole situation. And my team, I put together a team of a family support coordinator and then a clinical coordinator and then myself. And we actually were dedicated to this whole case the whole time. And so my coordinator and the family support coordinator did meet Olivia at the hospital when she arrived on Sunday by flight.
And Jessica and Larissa, her mom had already come across stories of children who needed life-saving organs for transplant. So didn't they come to you guys about a direct donation? Yeah, actually, shortly after Olivia arrived at the hospital in North Platt, her father actually rode with her and then her mother took a commercial flight and arrived at the hospital probably a few hours after. Once everything was kind of settled in place and we had a chance to huddle with the entire hospital care team that had been put together, including the parents at that time Larissa brought up that she had connected with a family who had a small child, a two-year-old Olivia who was definitely in need of a liver.
And she had hoped that Olivia could donate her liver to this little boy. So we discussed direct donation at that time and let her know that there was a few things that did obviously need to happen, one being that the blood types needed to be compatible. And secondly, size and the physician would need to accept Olivia's liver as an appropriate match for this child. So we immediately got some of the information and did reach out to Pittsburgh and let them know what was going on, gave them the information about Olivia and then kind of left it in their hands at that point.
They were going to take it to their obviously their transplant surgeon and the parents and kind of discuss everything on there and that would need to happen. In the meantime, Olivia actually at this point was not brain dead. So a couple of extensive conversations had taken place as far as how I guess Larissa and Rassan wanted this to happen in timing wise. And so that was really a key component to this whole situation because we weren't sure if we were going to do donation at the cardiac death or if we were going to be doing a brain dead donation.
So the care team and ourselves did reach out to a neurology group actually at our local children's hospital in Omaha and just really asked some point in questions about Olivia's condition, looked at the MRI, the CT scan and wanted to be sure that brain death was going to be of potential in the situation. They did feel that she was progressing that way and that it would happen fairly soon. So Larissa did and her husband made the decision to wait for brain death to occur and that declaration happened in that following Wednesday. And so everything as far as the direct donation and even the donation process kind of halted and was put on hold through those three days that we waited.
Once that brain death declaration was done and we were able to start the process and so we did touch base again then with Pittsburgh at that time and death when they did accept the liver for Lewis. I mean, while mom and dad to know about donation to want donation and for this little girl, I mean, this precious little girl. But then look at the teamwork too that goes in to making life happen. I mean, I'm sure this was a rare case, right?
Yeah, the situation was very rare, especially coming, you know, starting out in a hospice situation. I don't think that we think oftentimes that donation, you know, can come from that type of patient population. But also to explain kind of the logistics, this is a small community, it's more of just a community hospital. So they have a smaller ER and a very small ICU, but they actually do not keep pediatrics typically.
They would actually, you know, transport to Omaha to our children's hospital. The hospice doctor was really instrumental. She went to a few select physicians, including one of the anesthesia physicians there in the hospital and really got them on board and kind of made her care team. And then we had our team and then we collaborated together.
And so they typically weren't even experienced in taking care of a pediatric population. Everything just kind of, well, with a lot of effort, but fell into place. Yeah. And that's the thing.
She hit the nail on the head when she said collaboration. Usually we're thinking of the logistics just within one area. And here you're talking about Florida, Nebraska and Pittsburgh. So to have, you know, basically across the United States, all of these collaborations that have taken place and the logistical hurdles that had to be crossed because this mom was determined, you know, and she wanted her daughter to save lives and have a legacy.
And she knew, you know, that the recognition was what she wanted and she wanted to donate. What a mom. Yeah. And what an effort by you guys.
I have to, you know, applaud you guys for going the extra mile to see this through. You know, it's really amazing listening. And I thank you very much, Jessica, for taking part in our podcast and to be able to give your side of how you guys were able to help in this wonderful story. Oh, definitely.
You know, to be quite honest, the impact that this little girl had on everybody, there wasn't the moment of hesitation in anyone that was involved in this. And when we needed something or they needed something, people bent over backwards to provide it. So I think it's because volume is to the power of what we do and how others can help. I think another thing that we can pull from this story is that Olivia was only three years old and look at the lives impacted from this one precious child.
So young, but look at the impact that she made. So, you know, we talked about Lucas, the two year old, but she saved her lives as well, right? Yes. Amazing.
She actually helped four people. Her heart was also transplanted her intestine and then her kidneys to one recipient. My goodness. What a story.
You've probably seen her face on Facebook or social media. I think she's helped us reach folks that wouldn't have even given donation a second thought. So look what she's able to do at three years old, a little hero, Olivia. Now, Jessica, if anybody wants to learn more about what you guys do, where you guys are, that kind of thing, how can we reach you?
We are on Facebook. It's Facebook, slash, Nebraska dot donation. And we also have a website, anydonation dot work. All right.
So, we're going to talk about the time. Thanks for what you do. Thank you. All right, Jessica.
Thanks a lot. Thank you, Joey. Okay, Joey, you know, we're out and about in the community because we focus on education. We don't folks to know as much about donation as possible.
And my feeling is we can sit there and throw facts and figures and all that at people all day, but I think they really connect with our stories, faces of donation, right? But we have a special family that really, and they do this together and they try to save as many lives as possible by honoring their hero, Mickey Fazio. So joining us now by phone, we have Monica Fazio. Hi, Monica.
Hi, Lauren. So Monica is mom of Mickey Fazio, a hero. We'll also be talking to Caroline Fazio. She is Mickey sister.
Hey, Caroline. Hey. And we appreciate you guys joining us and we appreciate all what you do. And we just want to let folks know how easy it is to kind of get involved and to honor those heroes and to save more lives.
So we just want to first start off by talking about Mickey, which I know you love to do guys. So tell us about that beautiful boy, please. Well, why he is, he is our child out of five that gives always the one that everybody will happen no matter what our crisis in our house was. You can always make, you know, make light of it.
So it's been a very big missing one. So I'm not having Mickey here, we just have five year anniversary of Mickey staff on the set on July and it is, you know, he's like it was yesterday, but it was, you know, I look back and go over how fast and for these years are gone because, you know, he was just such a huge part of our family and, you know, the kids missing and God knows mom and daddy just lost half of our heart with his child. But the morning of Mickey staff, I mean, this is how he would be things. He comes into my room and he had a nose sleeve and he somehow made horns with toilet paper coming out of his nose and we were all just on lap.
I mean, he just, then I said, Mickey, seriously, your dad is an anti. I think you ought to make go outside and let him look at it. If you can't, you know, if you want to stop letting look at it, you might need a cord of art or whatever. And we were in the process of having our race redone, we had all this just traveling all the way around our home.
And we then probably maybe four minutes of that child walking out of our home, we heard massive crash, which truly shook our home. And the other four kids who were all upstairs, we were like, slightly too thick, and two were going down the front and two were down the back and we could get out that. And I think we didn't really know what had happened. And by the time we all hit the side of the spot, you could hardly get to our pool area because a massive lamb had fallen out of an oat tree and engulfed our pool area and absolutely engulfed the bottom of the pool.
So we were climbing over limbs and whatever time to get to my husband who was, you know, he had a little cat with a tree, but just caught up from the limbs and some of the blush. So he looked at me and said, well, I know, I thought I was in the scene and Caroline Desmond, he was right on side of the oat line. So we didn't think anymore about it. We got blank and we were all trying to climb over there to get back in and get him to come down.
And then in the meantime Caroline and James are youngest went upstairs to see if Mickey gone upstairs. I got maybe he got inside. And I came down and I said, well, Mom, he's out upstairs. And I left blank in the scene, washing himself off and I decided running and I went around the way and I saw Mickey pinned under the tree in the bottom of our swimming pool.
And I started screaming and somehow I kind of fell through with me and I'm dialing on my mom screaming and everybody's running out and trying to find the oldest one in my husband and toward jump in and how I will never know that somehow they were able to un-pin him and get him up onto the side of the pool and start recertification. And it's hard to go work. You know, he messed down here and loaded him up and I mean they worked and worked and then they moved us up to ICU where Dr. Scrantz came out and said, you know, that Mickey probably sustained a tremendous head injury as well as being under water.
And he really just did not think that he was definitely going dead. And really kind of that's where the story begins because you have to make decisions. My precious angel who when he went out there to drive his license put that beautiful red heart on his driver's license. But I am sure never thought anything about it.
You guys know we never talked about it. I'm going to make the decision really quickly that Mickey was such a getting person. He helped everybody, everybody became along. So it really wasn't a whole lot for us to make the decision to go ahead and donate what they could do.
I know you said the five year anniversary just passed but I remember when you first started speaking and I know it's still emotional for you. But you say speaking and honoring Mickey, you know, helps you and your family heal and I'm just amazed at the place that you're in right now to be able to tell this story because I know that it's going to help save lives and I think you know that as well and it honors your son too. I'm just all listening to you today. Well, I'll tell you if it was not for you and I'm not doing this because I'm talking to you.
I think I suppose maybe when it was maybe not quite six months after Mickey's death and I was determined that I was going to be there and it was brought me down to healing paths that I've shared with so many people that I don't think if any of us we would be where we are today if I've not done this. It is a healing but to know that there's a little sweet piece of Mickey somewhere out there. This world is a better place and I just wish more don't I think it's just give himself a little bit of time and be able to get out there and realize you can either take this beautiful life that God sends us and when he calls us back home you have the option to be able to honor that person by letting those organs save someone and what an incredible I think there's just no greater thing that you can do to honor a person than to be able to save a life for someone. And I work now but I've been able to follow so many of these precious stories.
I was a band and I was windy and it was in clean so hard to build bridge but you do become a little family but it has helped us probably heal more than anything that we could have done. I was telling Lori I did go sometimes people go I don't know how you can do that or why do you do that. You have to be read that or whatever but for me it's all about getting out there and not just promoting organ donations but teaching people that it is the right thing to be because you're loved one because organs are just so hard and they can actually save someone and that's to think people just need education is so incredibly important and I tell you since we have started it just seems like it's just a blossom. Lori, you know it's not there and you know it's bigger and bigger.
You know but I'm just saying y'all have you know y'all school group that you'll have with all the different things that you'll have going on. You know even because you've got one person and that one person gets another person and another person and that's that's happening to you guys but I truly am a friend of mine that asked me you know why why do you do it and I said because I'm a hoot and I know that he's up here just running from there to here. Monica I'm gonna stop you because Joey we really want to talk about what the Fosios have been helping us do in the community not only do they give presentations and as you can tell it's pretty emotional pretty powerful so from front of an audience they really capture that attention even if it's the teenagers that kind of thing but then we kind of take it on the road. Right we do and we talk about and she touched on you know how much impact one person can make and they are making that huge impact and Caroline he was you know Mickey was part of a fraternity and this fraternity has been honoring Mickey and can you talk a little bit about what they've been doing to honor him and his legacy.
Oh yeah well every year that they decide for Trinity I was sure that a blood drive and global comes and so it's such an amazing thing to see not only a school but it's a small community come together whether it's to donate blood to help save lives or to find out what an ordinary donation to honor Mickey and being his sister to see all those people support something it's just an amazing thing to see. And I know that one year we were out there and you guys brought Mickey's truck out there which brought back a lot of memories but even if we mention something Joey we say hey we're thinking we need a life size license that we can bring to these classes and get these kids involved and that kind of thing and Monica said okay I'm on it and then like I think it was like the next week right we had a design done we had it and delivered okay she done mess around with this family so we just appreciate the work that you do and we hope that donor families out there recipients hear this story and that they choose to volunteer get involved in some way shape or form we try to have lots of events and try to make it as easy as possible and we just appreciate the work that you guys do in the time that you dedicate not only to honoring Mickey but to saving other lives. Thank you. Well we should be thank you so much.
Thank you Monica thank you Caroline. Bye bye. Today we are talking about an electronic tracking system as part of our technology segment that helps us save more lives and this is pretty cool because this is like real time tracking. Right it is we're taking a page out of the playbook of the shipping companies industry where they use the barcode technology to be able to track things you know so you know the clinical coordinators on the recovery side can actually put a barcode on the blood tubes or on the packaging for the organs themselves so that we can then in turn keep track of it in real time to know exactly where it is at all times you know when it leaves the operating room when it arrives you know safe it's flying on a fixed wing flight or when it arrives to the transplant center because as we've talked about before it is such a time sensitive industry right every minute counts so far for the transplant surgeon to be able to look and see you know we've got this code for this you know say for a liver that's coming and for them to see that it's only you know 40 minutes out and they can start their procedure on that end every minute counts and lives are going to be saved so it's a new project and it's been spreading through each of the OPOs we expect to be using it soon as well you know but before you know what all the OPOs all of the organ recovery agencies throughout the United States will be utilizing the transplant system and we look forward to it.
Love me some technology real time tracking but the bottom line is saving more lives. Joey we have come to that point in the podcast where we kind of pause and we want to honor those heroes and that's one of our favorite segments I think each time we get to it and earlier in the podcast we talked to Monica and Caroline Fazio and they told us about their hero Mickey you could just hear the love. Yeah they had such a passion in their voices especially when Monica was talking you can tell you know her face was lighting up and she's telling us the stories about him before and then about how much he enjoyed life and it's just amazing to see her progression and Caroline's progression from when they first started talking because they both said okay this is the fifth year anniversary of his death right when when she first started and she said you know she was very nervous she didn't know what to expect she didn't know what to say and now she has such healing in it and there's meaning behind it but when she first came we were doing a presentation and we were at the fraternity house that he was part of they desired and she was so tired when she showed up and I was like Monica you know I was just thinking man this was very emotional for her well she wanted to have the perfect presentation for her baby and so she found every picture that she could find and she put it on these like pushboards you know those wooden boards and you push the pins in them and she just wanted everybody to see how full of life he was so there was like a prom pick a family pick a crazy pick you know how you guys take all these crazy selfies and stuff like that he's in his truck looking cool you know and there's one exacting crazy with his sister and his brother and those kinds of things but it was just like this picture of this handsome boy doing all these things in life and never knowing you know that he would one day be a hero so she showed up with this huge board and then another board and then another board and she brings those around but that really helps her connect with her audience no matter if she's talking to kids high schoolers adults because they see that face they see those big brown eyes and they know that he was loved and they know that he's a hero because after the harmonic story they know for sure you can read more about Mickey Fazio at lopa.org faces of donation and other heroes as well so check that out and if you know of a hero and you want us to learn more about them send it to info at lopa.org but at this point our podcast Joey let's go ahead and pause and we will just want to say thank you to Mickey Fazio for the gift of life. We have reached the question and answer is that but here on the gift of 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 lopa.org Joey when someone is a living donor who pays for the donors surgery. Well Laurie that's a great question and I've gotten it too. The recipients insurance company actually pays for both of course the transplanted side and the donor side in these cases so the recipients insurance company takes care of both sides of the cost in these situations so it doesn't come from the donors insurance company. Alright 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 lopa.org if you want more. This episode has come to a close here in the gift of life we do want to thank our speakers who took the time to help us learn today. Absolutely Laurie. First thank Sharon McGee Hills for talking to us a little bit about the essence festival and doing so much for the community there and Jessica Roth out of Nebraska organ recovery to share that fascinating story about Olivia and in Monica and Caroline Fazio enlightening us and sharing Mickey's story with us.
Just some cool volunteers. We love it. We thank everybody and we hope that you enjoyed this episode as well and we hope that you share it too. You want to know how to get involved.
Well we're ending July getting into August which means school will be starting. I pause there just to hear the groans across the state there. But we work with the teachers and we become part of the curriculum to talk about organ donations so if you want to have us in your classroom we're very flexible. We work with you.
So if you know the teacher your student goes to a certain school you want organ donation in that school or in that classroom lopa.org slash speaker fill out your information that will go to the nearest community educator to you and we'll get in touch and then we'll work together to make life happen. Thank you for listening. Remember to spread the word do something today that you don't normally do. Just spread a little awareness.
We hope you have a good one. We'll catch you next time here on the gift of life.