Oh, and welcome to the Gifted Life Podcast, where we have conversations about organ, tissue, and eye donation. I'm Laurie Steele. I'm Joey Boudreau. And I'm Sally Chintry.
And we appreciate you tuning in. We have so much to talk about on this episode of The Gifted Life. We hope that you help us spread the word. One of the things coming up is that we'll be highlighting one of our life-saving partners, Mora.
You'll have to stay tuned. Absolutely. And we're going to be talking a little bit about one of their new campaigns. It's super easy, Laurie.
It's so easy. So easy. I love it. That's not the campaign.
It just made me think of it. And in our family services segment, we're going to talk about styles. It's also grieving. That is, do men grieve differently than women?
Oh, never thought about that, Sal. See, always learning. We're on our hero as well here on the Gifted Life, and we'll take your questions. We're hoping that what you hear today, you take back into your community, your church family, your schools.
We want you to help us spread the word, and we try to make it as easy as possible. It is very easy. You can find us anywhere. We're on iTunes.
We're on Google Play. We're on Pocketcast. Are any of your favorite podcasts out? You can find us.
Yeah, and we know you like social media as well. That's where you get a lot of information. So if you're on Facebook, it's Donate Life Louisiana, Twitter and Instagram at Donate Life LA, and hey, maybe you like the landlines. And you can get us there too, certainly.
And that number is 504648347. From memory, Joe, you saw that? Yeah, I got it down. Hotline.
Paul is, we may use your audio here on the podcast, but I'm ready to go. You guys ready? Yep. Let's do it.
Here in our community segment, we have a heavy hitter out of Mississippi. We love partnering with folks from across the country to figure out what is it they're doing and how they're doing it right. And we like to learn from each other. And so, Joey, your buddy joins us now.
Yeah, absolutely. The CEO from Moira, Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency. Kevin, snump on the phone with us. Hey, Kevin.
Hi. How's it going? I hope you all see me. I hope you all see me.
I hope you all see me. I hope you all see me. I hope you all see me. All the time.
Down to 109 degrees right now. Cool wave. We're doing good. Yeah, man.
So Kevin, we wanted to highlight, we're trying to highlight some of the OPOs and things that they're doing and initiatives that they've got. And of course, I was fortunate to be able to go and travel there in Jackson at their new facility or their facility that they've got. And I took part in a race that they had and didn't realize getting into it. I thought it was a 5k race.
So I was like, I can do a 5k. Yeah, easy. That's easy. And then I show up and they throw a 5 mile race.
They're like, oh, what happened to the 5k? And in the heat. So anyway. I'm a Saturday morning.
Yeah, that throws a lot of people because they're working 5k race and we do an 8k for the 8 lives of the organization. So you're not the first to walk up and go walk. I don't know. I wish you had a few people put the kind of back away.
Well, I hung in there for a little bit. But I do like that idea. The 8k, 8 for the 8 lives saved. I thought it was a great race.
We had a great time. And then while I was there, of course, I saw that you guys are building a huge new addition to your building that you've got there. And you're going to have an ICU and an OR suite. Stand alone.
That'll be just for Mississippi Art and Recovery Agency. So can you tell me what brought up on all that idea and how many challenges have you faced trying to build it? Oh, it's here's the board of directors that we bought some land and build our own building so that we could ultimately someday have our own cars and our own Dunmer Trippie Garden. We originally bought some land to build a new building.
And while we were in the process of trying to design the building, some property became available that already had a building on it that had been a model to do, which had gotten shut down about five years ago. And so the chairman of the board, and I said, please don't think I'm crazy, but what do you think about us buying this property and renovating it because we're renovating this lot less than building it. Fortunately, the people on the property and the building were really going to hurry to try and get it off of their books. And so we got a great deal on it and building a property four years ago.
And yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, yes. It does. And so we've been in this building now for the dream is to add on a clinical edition.
And so in September, or acts number, we awarded the contract last year. And in January, we started the groundbreaking and process of adding about a 6,500 square foot. It will have a medical supply storage space, a doctor's lounge, a sterilization area, you know, cleaning, dirty room. It'll have two ORs.
For the tissue donation, it will have a wash prep room. It will have a more cooler in there so we can ensure the proper care of the body. And so we're the occupation date was around August, but with rain. I'm going to go to the September cover getting ready and probably start using it with tissue donors.
We're first in November and then look at starting to relocate organ donors beginning some time into the year first and next year. Kevin, I can't wait to come and see it. Of course, I saw all the plans that were laid out when I was there. And I can't wait for you guys to see it in running because we're trying to do the same thing here.
You know, there are a lot of challenges in organ recovers, exactly. The big change. Obviously, and this is a big change in there. There are eight others, organ recovery agencies that are doing that have their own standalone ICU right now in the war.
And of course, you know, it'll be into double digits by next year. So we're looking forward to it. And I certainly want to see what you guys are doing. I like for you guys to be our guinea pigs.
Well, I mean, our strength is we live in the office. So, you know, it is a challenge. I mean, it's something, you know, 10 years ago, we would have never thought of it. So, you know, and then we, you know, it's crazy folks have the same idea and push for us to do that is the head of our transplant program, Tanger from St.
Louis. And he was like, you know, you guys are in plans for doing this. You know, I've seen the benefit of it. So what do you anticipate as your primary benefits?
Primary benefits will be less of a burden on the hospitals, you know, all the country in the city and Louisiana, you know, all of our getting pushed and strapped and, you know, to financial limits. And so, you know, we'll be able to relocate the patient sooner to be hopefully less of a burden on the hospital staff. I mean, we've had situations, I don't know about job where we've had an ICU bed. We're working up to organ donor and there's a patient in the ER and they're staring at us like, you know, how soon can you get to the ER?
We need that bed. Well, now we'll be able to much quicker into our area of ICU where we can finish up the donor management and the placement and then go to the OR and we know if we said no OR, it's 6am. We'll go at 6am because we're not going to have the risk of getting bumped by a trauma that comes in. And so, the benefit for, you know, staffing purposes, the benefit for the transplant program, they know, okay, we're going to surgery at 6, we'll start to transplant at 10, and they don't have to wait until that might change because we're going to get bumped.
You know, there's all sorts of benefits, financial relationships with your hospital, and then ultimately the outcome for the recipient is, you know, hopefully get the program quicker and get gets transplant and quicker and it does better. So, I can certainly empathize with that. We have, like you said, it's across the nation where the hospitals are becoming more and more strapped. And in timeframes, you know, we're getting crunched a little bit when we're trying to maximize the organ function and trying to place and save as many lives as we can.
You know, while at the same time, like you mentioned, they're looking and saying, okay, when are you available to go? So, I'm looking forward to it. I'm very anxious to get started here and I can't wait to see you guys start with all that. So, one of the other things I want to talk to you about Kevin was, I saw, you know, from last year to this year, you guys have made a huge, huge improvement.
Can you talk about that a little bit? I think we've been in our community that we serve here and we really were looking at what is going on because historically, two years ago, we've been in one of the higher before we go to the other, over the last few years, really. And the biggest area that we saw is within the African American community, we get down into almost a single-digit conversion rate consent rate. So, in looking at that and what was going on, making personnel changes, we assigned some people to the then our family care services department from maybe organ family consent to the tissue family consent.
And we also brought in one of the experts out in the field that I know you all have worked with, Devarts and that group. And, well, the changes in personnel and with the training, we've been able to turn it around. We were, for the last one months, back above 80% overall consent rate, and we're on track to have one of our best years of the trans-finer and for a number of tissue donors. So, we're on track to do about $225 tissue donors and we're on track now to get close to about $270 organ strasment, which, where I decided to buy a serrated area would be a year ago.
We're just going to keep our fingers crossed. It continues to go and our family care coming in who y'all know and know her family, and she's got a wonderful history of being able to create a very functional and cohesive group of individuals to support and work with families to put what they decide that this is their opportunity to help others. So, I'm hoping that it continues to improve and grow. And, after she gets her on August 8, I think I'm scheduled for vacation on August 9.
You have earned it. I love it. I'll be driving off the earth to get some of the loot in. Come on, we'll take you to lunch.
I love it. Yes. So, your director of family services is the sister of one of our local life saver, Shelly. She can't say no great things about you guys.
So, we look forward to working with you guys more. And coming up in the podcast, we are going to talk to you with you guys about this super easy campaign. So, more to come from Moira. Thank you, Kevin.
Thank you, Kevin. Thank you all. We appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity.
Chuck Stinson, director of community relations with Moira joins us now. We just talked to Kevin with Moira and talked about all the wonderful things that they are doing to try and make life happen. And Chuck is behind a new campaign. It started in May of 2016, and it's moving in the right direction.
Hey, Chuck. Hey, you're doing good. We just took some time to look up. It's a super easy campaign.
Pretty cool, man. Yeah, we are excited about it. It was something that was kind of spawned out of talking to younger people and finding out what they thought about donations and the fact that they didn't know how to register. And this was just an opportunity to tie in the superhero theme, which is very common in our industry.
The superhero theme and how easy it really is to register. You can do it in less than two minutes. You know, you can do it in less than 10 seconds if you're asked at the Department of Public Safety. But it strikes you that you want to register when you're not in front of a driver's examiner.
Then you have the opportunity to register and it takes less than two minutes. It is a standalone website. And we just encourage people to go and look at the really kind of cool theme that we thought at ages he did with this. We took an idea to them about superheroes and making it easy to register.
And they really took that idea and ran with it. And it was really great that they were a bunch of superhero geeks. It really made the campaign kind of stand out. They really foreseen and did an outstanding job at Thousand Views online.
And over 20,000, I think just on YouTube, over 230,000 Facebook advertising. It is a digital campaign. We haven't put it on the area yet. We did the digital campaign geo-targeting college campus areas.
And we hope that this is going to play into a college challenge that we will do later in the fall as well. But we like the idea. It's really fun. It's really campy.
A lot of things that we've done in the past have been testimonials from donor families and recipients. And they talk about their donor being a hero. And they're so quiet. We just thought we put a little different take on a little campy kind of fun spell.
And we just turned out in our boss's window. It was actually wrapped in the camp. He's proud of that fact. I like it.
Now, did you pose for any of the superheroes that were? Are you one of these folks? No, no, no. I don't look good in fights.
One of the characters references that. And I'm worse than him. So that's not me. I love it.
But it is smart. I mean, we're saying that to everybody's tied to their phone. That's how most people get their information. So taking that digital approach, it seems to have paid off.
It's paying off. It has not reached the registrations that the ad aid is here that we wanted to hear it more. But what we do know is that with over 2000 views that hopefully we are having the people are having a conversation about it, showing it to their friends. And then maybe that's one conversation that we see registrations down the road somewhere.
We hope that that's the case. We like to think that that's the case. And I have to think that's the case to keep my job. But we've done something that's had over 2000 views by people because that's not something we've ever done before here in this agency.
And so we're excited about that. And we can find different ways to tweak that down the road. So is it as easy as typing in? It's super easy.org?
Yeah, that's it. Just type in. It's super easy.org. And people, and it'll take you right there.
If you're already registered as a donor, the really cool thing is you click on the already registered button. Now this is just exclusive to this point. We hope to maybe franchise this out if people want to look at it. We're going to offer that opportunity down the road.
If anybody wants to use it, but you just click on the already registered and you can see the heroes. And they're all testimonials. There's the commercial. There's a long interview segment.
And then there's all testimonials for all the heroes. And they're made up characters. They were costume here in Mississippi. They were actors that are here from Mississippi.
In fact, the actual donor, CJ, is a young man from Alabama who goes to college here. And he was a registered donor. He is a registered donor. He registered when he was in Alabama.
So, but in their all called actions, but in their some humor that's involved and it's really kind of it's kind of the lighter side of what we are about. I mean, it could be cool and it can be fun to be registered as a donor. Yeah, and I like how these campaigns always lead into something else. We want folks even here in Louisiana to have that conversation.
And so you kind of can already see how this campaign is kind of leading you in that direction to your next big thing, right? Yeah, that's what we want to do. You know, there's there's an ebb and flow to what we do in terms of marketing. And we are we are trying to get people to see this organization is important.
And what's really at the core of that importance or what we think is really the most important part of that factor is people having a conversation about the nation. We have a testimonial here from a family that talks about there was a young man who was playing high school football. He had an issue and he was eventually the family was eventually approached about donation. And the father was against donation.
They did not want that. He did not want that to happen. But the mother spoke up when the family was talking with a family care specialist and she said, wait, Walker, the son had told me he had told me a year ago that he was a child. And he told me a year ago that he wanted to be an organ donor that he thought that was the right thing to do if anything ever happened to him.
And parents at that time don't ever think about that being an issue that they're ever going to be confronted with. But because of that conversation, because they had that conversation a year prior to his death, which is unfathomable, if you have children that think that could happen, but there's a possibility that it could. And they had that conversation. This was a 16, 17 year old young man who got a heart on his license, told his mother that he wanted to be an organ donor or something that ever happened a year later.
That question was in play. And otherwise the organization, the father and the mother are big proponents of donation. They believe that this was the way that it should be because their son wanted it this way. And this is something that we want people to do to have that conversation.
And that's where we want to go maybe in our next campaign. A little more serious than what we did with the It's Super Easy.org campaign, but we want people to just have that conversation about the nation and see what's launched from it in the family. Yeah, we were talking to some of our friends at AMAT and they said what they are seeing is that those personal stories, those personal testimonies work best. And so we play on that.
We see that Mississippi is doing that as well. So Chuck, we want to thank you. You want to learn more about their campaign? It's super easy.org or you can visit the Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency's website.
That's MSORA.org. Today in our family service segments, we are talking about styles of grieving. Yes, Sally. I have a challenging question for you.
Do men grieve differently than women. What a challenge, Joey. Thank you. And she says, well, you know, there's an optimal level of grieving that varies from one person to another.
And as you know, no two people, regardless of gender, grief is not exactly the same. Because sometimes you'll hear people say, oh, I know, I know what it feels like. I know what you're going through. And no one really can do that because we each come with our own separate worldview, if you will, and how we've learned how to cope in the past and to deal with our own personal grieving.
And, you know, research that's been based or focused on differences between men and women and women found some variations there. And we need to keep in mind that the major reasons has to do, again, with cultural expectations and the way our society defines masculine and feminine. And, you know, your masculine guys generally do taking charge, problem solve, you know, you got to be strong, support others, less expression of feelings, more concerned with thinking than feeling independent, moving activity. And really, as you mentioned, challenge, just a moment ago, men generally see death or grief as a challenge that can be overcome.
And you know, too, that early life, boys learn that it's not okay to be vulnerable. You know, you keep that stiff upper lip. Otherwise, if you've seen openly grieving, it might be considered by your week, or, you know, you just can't, you know, live up to what the expectations are of others. So many times when boys hurt and they know they hurt, but they just prefer to cope with the pain alone.
And so, as, you know, men grow up, this is the way they deal with grief in their adult life. And actually, you know, some of the issues that come with that are, as Martin and Doka, who are researchers in the field of grief and bereavement, they talk about individuals being instrumental grievers, which means they're more likely to speak in physical or cognitive terms, as generally, that's what men do. And women are more intuitive type grievers. That is, they're more willing to express emotion, affect this sort of thing.
And it's okay, society says for women to openly, you know, express their feelings that way. And so, you know, these type, intuitive type grievers also are more likely experienced, like, waves of affect, and they need to express their feelings and seek that support of others. So you can see where the differences come into play between how men and women process it differently. But I think the most important thing is to recognize that people, men or women, grief, insistently, with the way they actually respond to their life in general.
And so, oftentimes when a husband and wife are grieving at the same time, as we see many times with the death of the child, that one will think the other's not feeling the same death of the pain, because they're just not expressing outwardly, you know, with the other things that the person should be doing. So, you know, this, it just applies to other family members who express their grief differently. And I think what's really important is that both men and women use their own strengths to deal with the grief, and in time both of them will work out or through their grief. It's also important to know that these differences need to be acknowledged and not corrected.
And I think that's where some people get into a bind, is where you just don't feel the same about it as what I do, why aren't you grieving, like I'm grieving. And you know, then that creates other situations that makes it even more difficult for both to get through. But, you know, finally, the caveat I think for both men and women alike is if there's an unwillingness to express grief in any form or any fashion at all, then we really set ourselves up for illness, bitterness, anger, just a sense of deadness ourselves, or a lack of joy. And we want to reach a place of adaptation or integration where we can, again, be engaged in really feel life as we had at one point in time prior.
So I think the main thing I'd like for you all to take away from this information is that, just keep in mind we're all different in the ways that we express what hurts us, and so just to be a little bit more aware that there are some differences, but we're all going through the same type of grief. These differences need to be acknowledged, not corrected. I like that. I need to remember that.
Alright, thanks Sally. Always learning something. You want Sally to talk about a certain topic here, info, at loba.org. At this point in the Get to Life podcast, we honor a hero.
We're kind of changing things up a little bit. We talk to our friends from Moira, the Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency, earlier in the podcast, and we want to honor one of their heroes, a Chase Rotten. Yeah, Chase Rotten was a fine young man, according to his mom, Liz. Someone who would make you laugh.
His former baseball coach, Sam Temple, was amazed at his attitude toward the people in his life and the people he cared about. His sister actually called him an all-American boy that loved life and his dad more than anything. His dad, Mike, simply said, Chase was his best friend. An avid hunter, sportsman, and athlete, Chase collapsed while on the mound, or Hines Community College in Raymond, Mississippi during the 2011 baseball game.
He suffered a stroke. The family had thought about donation even before they were approached about it at the hospital. Even though they didn't know that Chase was going, they knew in their hearts that he would not be going home with them. Chase's sister actually simply said, my first thought was if God was to take him from us, that it was his will for somebody else to live through Chase.
Chase would be a multiple-organ donor. His gifts included a direct donation to a family of Queenets. That was in need of a kidney. Chase's dad, Mike, brought up the idea to his wife Liz.
And her response was if her acquaintance and Chase were a good match, then God did perform a miracle. Other acquaintance was David Cox, and he gets to spend time with his son and family every day, and is thankful for his second chance. Another one of Chase's recipients was Linda Amos. Linda was in need of a heart in April of 2011 because hers was operating at just 15%.
But she was much healthier after receiving Chase's gift. Linda says her family knew that the person's heart she received was energetic and strong because her family couldn't keep up with her now. Fast forward to November 2013, where Linda and her family met the Rotten family for the first time. Despite living less than 30 minutes from each other, the families now have a bond that will last forever.
Chase Rotten lives on, and others, through his many gifts. There's a footnote to this story that is also incredible. Chase apparently had known about the power of organization long before he was a donor. In a picture, found in his high school days at Hillcrest Christian School in Jackson, Mississippi.
He was shown wearing a donate life t-shirt at a school event. Nobody from his family is aware of where or when he acquired that shirt. Wow. And I was able to see video and you can watch it too.
There's a video of Chase's story on Mora's website, that website is M-S-O-R-A.org. M-S-O-R-A.org. And it's under the tab Mississippi Miracles and Look for Chase's name. But he's in the middle of his crowd with his donate life shirt.
And it's pretty powerful. So check that out. Also, we have heroes on our page as well, LOPA.org. Click on Heroes.
And you can see more stories like Chase's. Thank you to Chase for the gift of life. In today's question and answer segment, the question is, why would someone need a transplant? That's an interesting question.
Very interesting. And it's got a few different answers to it. But for the most part, many of your organs can be helped, at least with certain medications or certain procedures. Like if you've got an end-state renal disease, which is often caused by high blood pressure or diabetes.
Sometimes you can put on dialysis and that can prolong you for a certain amount of time. With heart failure, sometimes there are certain devices that can help prolong. Unfortunately, most of these can only prolong for a certain period of time or as more harm that takes place than the actual benefit. So the better alternative is an organ transplant.
So, of course, like I mentioned, or we've talked about before, if you've got COPD or emposema type problems with the lungs, you can have a lung transplant. The heart transplant, especially with heart failure, liver failure, whether it's cirrhosis or whether it was from hepatitis or different diseases, you can still get a liver transplant. Pancreas, usually it's a diabetes. That's the issue there.
You can get a pancreas transplant. And oftentimes, when you do have the diabetes, it's impacted the kidneys to the point where you need both a kidney and a pancreas transplant. And look, our volunteers are very vocal and open. And if you log on to lopa.org and go to our podcast page or our YouTube channel, you can watch these videos and they go into detail about their story, what happened to them.
So it's very interesting and you can learn more there. You have a question for us, info at lopa.org or if you want to hear from me, give us a call. You can reach us at 5046483477. Call us.
Yeah, we may even play your audio on this podcast. We want it to be interactive. Get involved today. Another episode of the gifted life in the books, guys.
We want to give a special thanks to our friends there in Mississippi, Kevin Stump and Chuck Stenson for letting us in on a lot of their initiatives and all the things that are just really going on in Mississippi. Yeah, it's great for our partners and we always work together because our end goal is to make life happen. And hey, we do want to send out a reminder to everyone listening about our quilts that are now online. Sal?
Yes, all of our quilts are online right now. I want to give a really big shout out to Shalom. She just did a fantastic job of getting these, all of them on the website and each quilt stories there. So you can click on a particular quilt on a particular square.
Then if anyone's interested in designing a square and remember their loved one, you can go to www.lopa.org. Click on the heroes tab. Take a look. It will give you some ideas.
You'll see wonderful expressions of the creativity that people have done regarding their loved ones. And if you'd like further information, please contact us. And if you've already submitted a square but didn't include your loved one's story, please take the time and share that with us so we can have that along with the picture on our website. What a great way to honor heroes.
Gotta love it. And look, we're always saying, hey, one person can make a difference. Now that these are online, you can share these quilts where as you can share the stories that are on them. And it's just another way to spread awareness.
Something you can do that's just to click away. So go out today, do something you don't normally do to help us save more lives. Have a good one.