Oh, and welcome to the Gifted Life Podcast, where we have conversations about organ, tissue, and eye donation. I'm Laurie Steele, beside me as always, Joey Pedro, and this is episode three of the Gifted Life. So this is an exciting time. It is.
It is. It's amazing. We made it through episodes one and two. And they decided to keep us on for a third.
We love it. We love our community partners, and we love that you are able to find us in more places. The local.org is one place you can find us right, Joe. Right, and we certainly want you to also subscribe to us.
You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Windows, Phone, Miro, BeyondPod, TuneIn, and PocketCats. And not only subscribe, we'd like you to rate us a high rating so that we can be out there for everyone else. It'll be a little easier for people to find us. Yeah, please take the time.
Rate us. Give us those stars as many as possible if you can, so that we can do a great job about storing healthy conversations about donation. And it would be easy to find, right? So subscribe to us as well.
There's lots going on on this particular episode in the news. We tackle Blue and Green Day, which we blew out of the water here in Louisiana. We'll tell you all about it. It was a huge success, Laurie.
And in our recovery segment, we'll be talking a little bit about eye donation. We'd like you to spell those myths today, religion and donation. And in our community segment, we're going to have an estate planning attorney join us. All right, and how does technology help us with the donation process?
We'll talk about that too. And last but not least, of course, we'll be honoring a hero, as we will at the end of their podcast. Yeah, one of our favorite parts. Also, we'll tackle your questions and much, much more here on the Give to Light podcast.
Thanks for listening. And this is the news segment of the Give to Light podcast, episode three. Number one, we're already smiling because we're on episode three. And number two, we're smiling because Louisiana did up Blue and Green Day pretty big.
Did we joke. We did, of course, here at local. We did as much as we could. It was so nice being able to see on Facebook certain, you know, radio, stage, and stuff.
And we had a lot of conversations and TV stations and seeing all of them taking part. You know, it was really nice. Oh, yeah. Don't families dressing up in Blue and Green.
We had one house that they're lighting, like little white lights that usually kind of spot like the columns. Blue and Green. How'd you do this? Is that we had our OMB partners from the commissioner on down in Blue and Green.
We had recipients, those waiting, just everybody sent pictures and posted them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. It was amazing. So you ready for this show? We pulled some stats.
Okay. So, we got to go to Twitter and Instagram. We think that we pushed the envelope 110,000. I mean, amazing throughout the day, from early in the morning to late at night, we had about 100 posts to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram from our social media team, but we couldn't have done it without those OMB partners, without the families, without the Lopez staff.
Everybody get involved. Even Mickey Mouse, Joey. Mickey Mouse. I didn't realize he was the happiest place on Earth, man.
Put it into perspective to reach 100,000 or over 100,000. It's like being able to just go into the middle of Tiger Stadium for instance at LSU Tiger Stadium on a hot Saturday and being able to just preach donor awareness, you know, to be able to capture that in much of an audience. And we had a lot of people being active and exhibiting their appreciation for donation. On just one day, National Blue and Green Day, two, for those conversations about donation.
And we had people from all walks of life. Like I said, the media, we had our OMB partners, the office and other vehicles. We had folks out who knew someone, who had a transplant or heard about someone. They were in blue and green.
My family was in blue and green. Everybody got into it and we loved it. But here's the great part. You don't have to wait for a day like that to show your support for donation.
You could do it year round. We want to see those pictures. We want to see them in what you can do with Snapple Picture and in Tagus. And on the Twitter handle at donatelifela or hashtag BGLAdonateLife.
You know what was really cool too? We had a family who visited Louisiana back in 2010 as part of a cross-country tour. The dad had gotten a kidney pancreas transplant. And so they visited every state talking about donation.
We think Louisiana was their favorite. That's what we're going to say anyway. When we keep in contact, it was the griner family. We sent them some Louisiana gear and they took a family picture in front of the van that they took cross-country, which was blue.
And then they had our donate life, blue and green magnets on the car posted it, sent it to us so that it could be part of our blue and green day here in Louisiana. So you got to love that, get involved. I mean, how easy is it to snap a pic because I know you yourself, you snap a lot of selfies. No selfies.
No selfies. I think I think I don't have a selfie stick. No, I'll have one. I could have sworn you did.
But Snapple Picture, Tagus, we want to see, we want to talk about it. And it was just so fun to talk to new people about donation. People who kind of heard a little bit about it, they heard we were wearing blue and green, but want it to be part of the fun. That's what it's all about.
Yes it is. Yeah, so keep doing that. Tag is on there. Spread the word about the get-to-life podcast.
And of course, we'll have more for you. Coming up right here. You're on the get-to-life podcast. We're creating more information and giving you the facts so that if you're asked, like at the office of other vehicles or on campus, or where you see us, your working doing it, you make an educated decision?
Yes, absolutely. In our previous recovery segments, we talked a little bit about organ donation. But the get-to-life podcast is not just about organ donation. It's about creating awareness and giving information about organ, tissue, and eye donation.
And in our next segment, we're going to have Callin Altman of the Southern Eye Bank, Callin. She's a director of education there. She's been there for 13 years, Southern Eye Bank is actually the third oldest Eye Bank nation. It was started in 1947.
Over 45,000 people that had sight restored because of Southern Eye Bank. We work closely with them. We also work with two other. We have three total Eye Banks in the state, Louisiana, Lions Eye Bank and that Rouge Regional Eye Bank are the other two.
So we'll go ahead and get Kelly on the phone. Hey, Kelly. Hey, Joey, thank you for having us. Well, thank you for coming on.
We just wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, we've talked before about our gondone nation and we want to talk a little bit about eye donation because there are many ways, shapes and forms of who becomes a hero. So can you tell me who can become an eye donor? Absolutely. I'd love to share this information with you.
Anyone can become an eye donor. Even if someone wears eyeglasses or contact lenses that does not prohibit them from becoming an eye donor, usually refractive powers that are inadequate like myopia or hyperopia. That's an internal problem with the eye. So if your corneas are clear, your corneas are healthy, you can definitely become an eye donor.
Even people who have had Lasix surgery can still donate their corneas. So you mentioned a couple of times eyes in corneas. So what's the difference in an eye donor or a cornea donor? That's a really great question.
The eye is so amazing. For such a tiny little organ, there's many, many components. So the cornea basically is like the window of the eye. It's clear.
It's a transparent layer on the front surface of the eye. I like to use the analogy of the super dome. So the color part of your eye, your iris, brown, green, blue, whatever you have, would be the floor of the super dome. Your cornea would be the roof.
And sometimes you just need your roof replaced. So it starts to actually remove the cornea surgically and replace a nice healthy cornea or another roof onto the eye. That's amazing. And so when you replace the roof like you say, so does it change the recipients, the trans-part recipient's color they are?
That is a great question also. I'm glad you asked. No, the iris, the color part of the eye remains intact. So only the cornea is transplanted.
However, there's another piece of the eye that's also transplanted or graph that I should say, it's called scallera, the white part of the eye. It's very fibrous and very strong. There's a lot of accidents. You know, monocents don't run the sharp objects for a reason.
So there's a lot of kids that actually have perforations to the eye and the scallera can actually be grafted with little pieces. So another aspect of scallera basically is to help people with glaucoma. Glaucoma is a very high pressure in the eye, intraocular pressure. And sometimes medication just can't help.
So what surgeons do is they actually place a little valve inside of the eye. It reduces the pressure, but you can imagine if you have a valve sticking out of your eye, not only is it unsightly, but it's also very uncomfortable when the patient blinks. So surgeons will take a little piece of scallera and place it over that valve. The valve will still function, but it's also cosmetically appealing and it's also very comfortable for the patient.
It is so cool, the things that we can do. Amazing. Now, Celine, I'm out in the community. I get a lot of questions about cataracts.
And then a lot of my high schoolers say, you're going to replace the cornea. How does that work? That's also a great question. It is a miracle transplant.
And really interesting is this year marks the 110th anniversary of the first successful corneal transplant. Isn't that incredible? That is amazing. So the cornea is a vascular.
So it really is universal gift. Anyone can give to anyone. And that's what makes it so successful. The corneal transplant is over 95% successful.
It's also the most common of all transplants. It's also the oldest. So every year in Louisiana, more than a thousand people are helped with a corneal transplant. It's about 5,000 nationwide and over 90,000 worldwide each year.
That is amazing. A lot of folks say, whatever I had cataracts, I don't think I can be a cornea donor. I want you to tackle that. Also, a lot of high schoolers say, if you're going to donate your cornea, how does that happen?
Physically, how does that take place? Laura, we heard that question a lot. Cataracts are a natural phenomenon that happens to people like me over the age of 40. There's a natural lens in your mind.
It's pliable and it's clear when we're young. But as we get older, that lens becomes more amber in color. And it really does the color vision that we have. It also becomes very hard.
And as we get older, that lens starts to develop into our cataracts. And that has to be removed at one time or the other. Usually in our 70s, the early 80s. And sometimes earlier, depending on the particular person, cataracts that lens is an internal problem.
It actually sits right behind the iris. So it has no effect on the actual cornea. So you can still become a eye donor if you have cataracts. As far as the transplant itself, tell your high school students that it really is an amazing process.
The actual cornea, the diseased cornea, is removed by the surgeon. There's something called a tree fine. It's like a biscuit cutter, basically. And that particular disease, the central part of the cornea, we call it the disease button, that may be cut in a 8 millimeter or a 7.5 millimeter disc.
And that particular little piece, little biscuit cutter piece is thrown away, it's discarded. And what happens is that the healthy donor cornea is cut maybe just a millimeter larger, and it's placed on top of the diseased cornea bed. It's sutured in place in a 360 degree pattern with sutures finer than a human hair. And those sutures will remain intact for either a year or longer depending on the patient.
Now there's a brand new procedure that actually has the corneal transplant being performed without sutures. And that's called desec, it's decimase dripping endothelial keratoplasty, a big, big word for new technology. Only the bottom of the 10% of the cornea is replaced instead of the entire full thickness cornea. That's a wonderful procedure.
And those corneal transplants are super, super successful. It's not for everybody, it's only for people with endothelial distro fees. Now from the donor side, does it affect the viewing of the funeral home? This is something that we're asked quite often at Loba.
When we're talking to the families about the eye donation, they don't want to have any changes in the viewing. Absolutely, Joey, I'm the granddaughter of someone who received a corneal transplant and I'm the sister-in-law of a donor. Every single one of our donors are so very important to us. So we actually take great care to avoid any misshapen corneas.
Even though the cornea or the eye is removed from the donor, there was no disfigurement or no change in appearance. So open caskets can be fine. That's what we strive for. They truly are heroes.
You know, to be able to give sight to two different people in this case, for someone who may have gone the rest of their life blind. But Joey, let me stop you. Let me stop you. You said two people.
Actually, six people can receive the gift of sight. Oh my goodness. So two with corneas because most people have two healthy eyes, but also the scallera like we were talking about earlier, that can actually be divided. So one eye can give the gift of sight through corneal transplantation for one person, but two people can be helped with scallera.
So if you have two healthy eyes, up to six people can be helped. That is that's it. I'm learning something every day here, Lauren. That's what it's all about.
And, Carlin, I want to share this with you. I work with the donor families recipients, those waiting. And one mama, and I love the way she put this, her son was a cornea donor. And she said, if his recipient sees the world the way her baby saw the world, their outlook on life is incredible.
I just thought that was so profound. I mean, I mean, that is so true. We receive letters almost every day from recipients and donor families. And they share the same sentiment.
It is the most wonderful gift. I can't imagine not having my vision. Give a listen, my son or give a drive, read a prescription bottle, read a book, drive to work. And there's a lot of people who aren't able to have their sight restored, people with internal problems with the eye, like a macu-generation or diabetic or a neuropathy or internal problems.
Unfortunately, a corneal transplant can't help them. But we try in many different ways to be able to help those people through our research and education program. I wish we could help everybody, of course. But you know, medical technology is wonderful.
It's just not there to help everyone yet. So for people with corneal blindness or injury or disease, we're able to help them. But who knows what's going to happen in the next 10 years with our research and education program? Maybe we can help everybody.
Yeah, absolutely right. Well, thank you so much, Carlin, for joining us and helping us to enlighten our sales as well as our audience. So I really appreciate you coming on with us. Yeah.
Laurie, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much. We're tackling myths here on the Good to Like podcast, episode three. We always like to bring up a myth that we hear in the community.
We like to dispel it and we like to argue with the facts. So today, Joey, we're talking about donation is against my religion. We hear that a lot. Yes, we do, Laurie.
You know, we also hear when that time comes for the family to make that decision. They'll ask us as local staff, does my religion support donation? And the answer is that all major religions in the United States support donation as a charitable act to give oneself to another. But we encourage them to speak directly to their church leader or clergy, because it's very important to get that personal decision or discussion between the two.
And you know, it's great, especially in the Baton Rouge area, which is where I work. A lot of these religious leaders are inviting us in. So we talk about it together. We work with a group of parish nurses that are tied to one of our largest dinner hospitals, our Lady of the Lake, and they always bring up Adam, Gaver, Webb to Eve.
So we support donation. So I just love how different people say it in different ways. And we like that. But if you want more about it, you want to learn more about it, read up for yourself.
Like Joey said, talk to your religious leaders. But also we want you to visit donatelifela.org. It's a one stop shop for all the information that you need. And then if you still have questions, send them to us info at lopa.org.
Our goal is to educate to inform on you with the facts. Welcome back to the get to life podcast. We have reached the community segment and Joey, you know, I'm out in the community and we're always looking for partners to help us spread the word. I got lucky about five years ago.
I got a call from a state planning attorney who said, Lori, I want to help you spread the word about word and donation. We don't get that every day. No, so I said, okay, let's have a meeting with this guy. And he's been the gift that keeps on giving.
Joining us now is Paul Roblele, a state planning attorney in the Baton Rouge area. Really just a friend to organ donation to those donor families recipients, those waiting on a transplant. How are you, Paul? I'm doing a great day.
Well, now a lot of people are probably saying, Paul Roblele, a state planning attorney, what in the world does that have to do with donation? You and I met about five years ago, tell us your interest in what got you involved. That's a great question, Lori. I have been planning a 24 about 25 years and early on in my career when we were just stuffing them to life issues with the school and we have many of them.
And I'll ask you the question that's all I'd like to be on a phone over. I don't know about it. What do we need to do? Do we need to put it in our will or just don't know?
One, several, you know, originally I didn't really have to go to the question. So I started looking into it and then I discovered Lobo and then I discovered all of the great things that Lobo was doing with organ donation awareness. I met Lori and some of the other people at Lobo and Bethie Vol into our farm taking a stance that we want to know. It's the one journey our state planning all farm has selected support over here and it evolved into an event set is now in its gift year.
And so we're excited about it. Do you want to have that Lobo for everything that they've done or so that's the push history of how we got Paul and Paul is humble without Paul. None of this would have happened Joey. So we're going into our fifth year and this man has done quite the deed for organ donation.
Yes, Laura, you're absolutely right. It's amazing what one person can do just in the Baton Rouge area alone. He's helped raise $70,000 in funds that help us in our efforts to educate the public. It's huge.
We'll great debt of gratitude to him. You know, it's an outstanding thing. And actually you mentioned the fifth year we're going to be having it again. It'll be in October on October 3rd of this year.
So we're looking forward to another fantastic run. Yeah, we're asking that your marker calendar saved the date and it's a 5k and it's a half mile fun run. But Paul, this is really a celebration of life for those families, for those donor families. This is a day that they get together and celebrate their hero or the person who saved their life.
Their loved one. It's really an inspirational day. Yeah, what I have, so one person can do all the work that's done over the last five years. It's really done a team of people.
We have high school bringing volunteers, veterans are under the volunteer that helped support the ball. We have donor families and donor recipient families to bring brothers and family out there to support a donor recipient or remember and donate. So they play a large role in the success of the event. Obviously, you know, people go both through it to our mentor's job getting everything organized.
So there's a lot of different people, a lot of different organizations. A lot of corporate sponsors out there who contribute to making this event of success. So we're really excited about that. And we'll just share and and October is always nice weather and so looking forward to that.
Everybody out there who's up to that stuff. And that catalyst for all of this is you, Paul Robley, who said, let me learn a little bit more about this. As you learn more about donation, let's do more and look at what we've been able to accomplish. It's just amazing that someone in the business world wants to be our community partner and help us make life happen.
That doesn't happen every day, Paul. You know how grateful we are. We're offering a great that and it's really good to have those. You want to talk about this item that's a positive event that is so much more than walking around and hearing all those stories and hearing all these families.
And it's really a positive event for the community. So I'm going to be part of it. It's great. We have folks who are already designing their t-shirts for October 3rd market calendar buttons, the colors they're going to wear.
They're coordinating. We have new families who are going to be part of our run. We have just runners who want to come out because Paul gives cash prizes. How cool is that, Joey?
I'll take it. That makes you want to run, huh, Joe? My slow job might turn to a brisk one. But we appreciate the help, Paul.
We appreciate the partnership and we know that you'll be with us for years to come and we just can't thank you. Over $70,000 poured into the Baton Rouge community for organ donation awareness. We just can't thank you enough. Well, I just don't find any many people as it's far in the classroom for the community.
So I'm like, so I'm so far out of this show. Paul Robley, Robley Law Firm, community helper, but just all around great guy. So we have Robley Run for Live coming up on October 3rd, 2015 in Baton Rouge, Pennington Biomedical Research Center. We hope you make it a family affair and know that as we get closer to the race, you'll be able to sign up online at lopa.org.
Check those calendars and make sure that you are part of this life-changing event. That was wonderful. Laura, I know you're looking forward to that race. Oh my goodness, it is great.
I love that we continue to grow. You know, when we first started, we're trying to do a new race in Baton Rouge and they said, oh, you'll be lucky if you get 50 people. That was the running folks, right? And so I said, oh, you know, we're going to push through.
And Paul said, no, we're going to do this. And now we're over 500 strong and we're growing every year. This is our fifth annual. Like when we started, we really didn't think we could say, hey, we're going to have an annual event here that's going to go on with this much support.
But it continues to grow thanks to people like Paul, our Lopa staff who lend a helping hand donor families recipients. Those waiting on a transplant. It's really a family involved project. It is.
And Paul said it's a teen effort. We need to get to the live podcast. We try to push the envelope a little bit, let you know kind of what's on the horizon as far as technology goes, what's being used in the world of donation. And this next segment, Joey has really helped the donation process in general.
Yes, it has, Lori. We do a significant amount of testing on the organs. And some of that testing includes radiology, some of that includes echoes, which are really like ultrasounds of the heart. We check each organ's function before we can say, well, this organ is suitable or not suitable.
And organ donation is not an eight to five or nine to five job. You know, it's it's a 24 hour job. And oftentimes these tests are needed in the middle of the night. So we've been able to partner up with a company called CompuMed.
And they're actually they're all Los Angeles. And they provided us with a software that allows us to upload these x-rays and echoes and things up onto a cloud. And they have physicians on the other hand who can interpret these at any time of the night, basically within within an hour of us doing the echo or doing the radiology. It's been a real big benefit.
Our recovery cases take quite some time oftentimes up to over a day, 24 hours long. And it's been able to help us cut down that time significantly. And in some cases, it's helped us when we didn't have that opportunity to do an echo or do these certain tests. It's given us that opportunity where we've saved an extra life or two and we've helped facilitate that life saving.
I just love hearing those stories. And it's just helping those families who have been in that hospital for so long, just kind of progressing and moving things forward to help make that wish come true. So technology is so amazing. And who knows what will happen tomorrow?
Yeah, there certainly has a lot of needs out there. And we keep working with our partners, working with our IT, you know, working with anyone who can give us that little added help. Anything to facilitate and make it a little bit easier for organization to take place. It's time to honor a hero here on the Get to Life podcast.
When we first started these podcasts, we said it's very important that we set aside time to honor those silent heroes who save lives each and every day. And at this point in the podcast here, episode three, we want to show the story of Tabitha McClincan. In 2011, she was a little girl, only 12 years old, but she went to open a bank account. And in order to do that, she had to go to the office of other vehicles and she had to get an ID.
So while there, what do you think they asked? Do you want to be a donor? Do you want to be an organ donor? And she said, yes, if I can save lives, I'd like to.
And she said, she heard the person next to her saying no to that same question, that sort of conversation, which is what we're hoping this podcast does with you and your family. So she talked to her parents. And if I can save lives, the organ donation in my death, I want to do that. About a week later, dad drops her off at a skating party for her friends.
And he gets a call, she's not feeling so great. He asks, do you want me to pick you up? She says, no, I'd like to stay here. And he says, okay, I'm going to circle back and I'll be in the area in case you need me.
And he got a phone call, not very long after that she was seizing. Doctors told dad and mom that she had a rare undetected brain bleed had nothing to do from skating or anything. It was just a rare undetected brain bleed that they couldn't do anything about. She was declared brain dead.
And the topic of donation came up in that hospital room as it does for many families. But this family had talked about it and that 12 year old told mom and dad what she wanted. And she wanted to save lives. It was Tabitha's wish.
So dad tells that story and he says it was so comforting because they had that conversation. He knew if something had happened to his daughter that she would want to save lives. And she did. Yeah.
And he's actually since created a Facebook page called Tabitha's wish. And you can learn about her and her career to story there. Yeah, she's a seven lives. We're still talking about it today.
Dad is one of our biggest advocates. And actually, we talked about the Robberley Run for Life. Tabitha's dad Duncan gives an award for the person who crosses the finish line last. And he says, because that person wasn't there to win the cash prizes, that person was there to support the cause.
So they get the Tabitha's wish award, which is pretty cool. At this point, we just want to pause and we want to thank Tabitha McLindon for her gift of life. Honest, we told you we would address your questions. We're going to answer some here on the podcast.
If you have questions, you want to throw out as info at lopa.org info at lopa.org. Today's question, Mr. Boudreau, can you donate organs if you had secondary hepatitis with mono 40 years ago? I've always been told not to donate blood or plasma is this true.
In fact, it's for blood plasma and bone marrow donations, it's a lot stricter screening and guidelines for organ donation. We're not quite as strict for many reasons. But the fact is, is that this secondary hepatitis is not an active hepatitis. Even if you did happen to have active hepatitis, like especially like hepatitis C, you can still become a donor because there are a lot of recipients, a lot of people who are on the waiting list because of hepatitis C.
So it does not rule you out. As we always say, don't think I'm going to be ruled out because of this or this or this. And in fact, you can still become an organ donor, even if you've had these previous problems. We have a recipient who works with us here in the Baton Rouge area, and he says that he had diabetes for 33 years.
So we couldn't donate blood, he couldn't do this, he couldn't do that. So we thought he couldn't be an organ donor. And then when he got a little education in him, he said, oh, I can say that heart on his license today. So don't rule yourself out.
Ask questions, learn facts, info at lopa.org if you want to pose a question to us or lopa.org, just the one stop shop for information. We want you to be informed, learn the facts. And we have reached the end of episode three of the gifted life podcast. We've covered so much, there's so much going on.
We're excited about it. And there's so much to come. I'm laughing at this because we have a Cinco de Mayo event, downtown Shreveport festival plaza. And one of the items on the agenda is a chihuahua challenge.
I love it. So donate life will be represented there. And so if you're in that area, we hope that you stop by. There's lots of events going on, check out our calendar.
Donate life la.org or lopa.org. And hey, maybe you're still showing off your blue and green joke. That's right. That's right.
Blue and green days pass, but you can still show off your blue and green any day. You know, it's not a pick. Don't forget and send it to us at Donate Life Ellie or hashtag BGLA Donate Life. And I'm going to get this guy selfie stick so we can get some more pics of him there too on Facebook.
But we don't want to thank our guests today. We've learned so much. Yes. And thanks to Kelly Altman with Southern Eye Bank.
I mean, she's given us a ton of good information about eye donation. I love it. And she loves personality too. All right.
And Paul Robley with the Robley law firm and estate planning attorney here in the Baton Rouge area. He is behind the Robley Run For Life. Mark your calendars. Everybody October 3rd, you'll be hearing more about this as we celebrate life here on the gifted life podcast.
Thanks so much for listening. And let us know from you whenever you wait and subscribe to our podcast.