Hello and welcome to the Gifted Life podcast where we have conversations about organ, tissue and eye donation. I'm Kirsten Heinz, Director of Public Relations and Education. I'm Joey Bujru, I'm the Chief Clinical Officer. And I'm Sally Gentry, I'm a licensed professional counselor and I also hope to all the status in the Americans like a therapy association.
Ooh, quite fancy. And we are so glad you chose to tune in today. We have a great episode with in-studio guests from around the country here to share some of their favorite stories about tissue donors and recipients. Yes, Kirsten.
We've got more in-house guests here and today we're focusing on tissue and we'll have the American Association of Tissue Banks or what we know them as the AATB. They're having an annual conference here in New Orleans so they were happy to come in here and give us a little bit more national view of tissue. And following what Joey just said about a different perspective, we're going to go ahead and combine our Recovery and Family Services Support segment today and we have Lopez's very own tissue manager, Blake Smith, and he's going to tell us something special we do at LOPA right before our tissue recovery starts. And as always, we'll be honoring a hero.
Today's story comes from one of my colleagues, Sarah Gray, the Director of Communications from AATB. And the story will reveal what fuel Sarah's passion for donation. And speaking of passion, those of you who tune in regularly may notice that I am not Lori Steele. No.
Even though I'm trying to emulate her. You don't need to hurt one. Yes, Lori's better known as the Voice of LOPA. But Lori had a special opportunity to represent us in Louisiana.
As some of you may know, we recently experienced catastrophic flooding across the southwest part of the state. And Lori was asked to go to the White House and testify on behalf of the Greater Baton Rouge Area about the need to support our flood victims. As many of you may know, over 110,000 homes were flooded, including nine from our own LOPA employees and countless other extended family members. One of our employees that was hit the most is our very own Sally.
And fortunately, she is now starting the reconstruction process. And Sally, would you give us a little bit of insight of how that impacted you? Well, you know, whenever I saw the water coming up, I thought, ah, no, it's not going to get to me. Well, but then I found out that that was not true.
It did. And so as some of you know that I've seen my post on Facebook, I had water in my house for over three weeks. But I was successful in getting out my horses. I have four horses and seven dogs.
I've been out safely. And you know, being in the mental health business, I have found that I can either make a choice of looking at this like, well, it's me. This is never going to end. But I know that things like this happen to all of us over time.
Maybe not this devastating or some, but I choose to keep a very positive attitude. I know it's going to get better. And each day I get up and I go, OK, one day closer to home. So for those of you who are struggling and find it very hard to get up and not keep your emotions kind of intact, I think it's important to keep making plans, you keep planning to move forward.
And I think that's what makes the difference for any of us that we just don't get stuck in. Oh, jay, poor me. And I was only able to rescue a few things out of my house, but then I got to thinking, you know, maybe that's not so bad. Maybe I didn't need all that stuff to begin with.
Because, you know, I found that no matter what you have, Mo has an equal opportunity grower. But I'm just very fortunate that I have a large network of acquaintances and friends who were willing to help me at a time that I never anticipated ever going through something like this. But once again, I'm not negating the way that I feel about it because it was somewhat emotional to begin with. But then I said, OK, all right, get a grip.
You know, this will not last forever and make your plans. And I think maybe for me, I'm very fortunate that I did have flood insurance. So that is helpful. But now we're in the process of demolishing the house and I move forward.
Kirsten and I had the opportunity on many levels to help others to be able to go out and start with the gutting and the cleaning and things. And unfortunately, we were never able to get to Sally's house in that process. That's coming up soon. That is coming up soon.
So we've got to... Special shout out to our LOPA leadership for allowing us to have that time. They were wonderful and helped really just pulling all of our resources together to help each other out. And the Tar LOPA staff, thank you so much for all of the help.
It's times like these when you really can see the truth, sense of an essence of who we are. Right. So of course we have a podcast to do here. As you guys know, we're out every other Friday.
And you can find us on iTunes, find us on Google Play, Pocketcast or whatever your favorite podcast app may be. And you can also find us on social media. Like us on Facebook, our pages donate life Louisiana, follow us on Twitter, Instagram at donatelifela. We want to hear from you.
Email us at your questions at info at lopa.org. And don't forget, we also have that phone number. What's that phone number? Oh, it's 504648347.
Give us a call. We want to hear from you. I bet you know that number better than your own cell number. I'm thinking I do.
We can't wait to get started. We've got a great episode for you. Let's go. Joey Sally, I'm so excited about today's podcast.
This podcast is all about tissue donation. And we get to talk so much about organ donation, but not as much gets shared about tissue donation and yet so many people can become a tissue donor. And lives that are enhanced by it. Millions.
Millions of allographs are used each year in surgical procedures to help restore people to healthy life and more mobile life. And I'm so excited that my colleagues from around the state, the PR Council from AATB, the American Association of Tissue Banks is here today to share some of their favorite stories. Yeah, Kirsten, we are fortunate to have Erin Martin with us. She is a senior manager, corporate communications and family services at RTI donor services.
And she's going to tell us a little bit about a story that's near and dear to her heart. So first of all, welcome Erin. Thank you for coming to our fancy little booth here we got. Thanks so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here. So can you tell us just a little bit about RTI? Sure, I would love to. RTI donor services, we are a not-for-profit tissue bank.
We're located in Alachua, Florida. So we've traveled a little bit to be here today. And we're dedicated to serving donor families and working in collaboration with the entire donation community and healthcare facilities throughout the country in perpetuating the gift of tissue donation. So I heard there was one particular story that really touched you in a way that kind of was life-changing.
So can you tell us about it? Absolutely, I would love to. So in tissue donation, these connections between donor families and recipients, we haven't really come across a lot of them. And I think it comes back to a lot of tissue recipients.
Maybe not sharing their stories as frequently as organ recipients are. So we're all as a group in ATB and the Communications Committee working on that and hoping to see more of that. But this one story in particular at RTI has really stood out to all of us and has really touched us. And what we're really came from is we were sitting back and brainstorming on a good donor family recipient story to share through our rose parade sponsorship.
And for those of you that haven't heard of our podcast about the rose parade, it happens on New Year's Day in California in Sacramento. And there is a whole float, a donate life float that is dedicated to honoring organ, eye and tissue donors, living donors and recipients. And it is absolutely a work of art. It is just gorgeous.
And ours, the donate life float has won many awards. I think they won an award almost every year because of the passion that we bring to it and the stories that we were able to share. Absolutely. So we're looking for a tissue recipient to be our rider on the float and then a donor to be honored through the floor graph, which is a portrait made of organic materials and seeds and flowers.
And at the time we were just looking for two separate individuals and we happened to be going through some of the thank you letters that we received from recipients and then some donor families choose to write back. And this one set of letters just really jumped out at us because it was so touching. And these two individuals, the donor family and then the recipient ended up writing back and forth a few times. So that's a story that I wanted to share with you today.
So we'll start it off with telling you a little bit about Mike Erickson. So growing up, Mike played football, he enjoyed the outdoors, he loved fishing and hunting and he was from up north in Wisconsin and did all the outdoorsy things and just loved life. And his mom described him as being just really funny and silly and quick-witted. And before graduation, he enlisted in the Marine Corps.
So he completed his basic training. He enjoyed the beaches out in California during his basic training. And he was really proud of being a Marine. Unfortunately, after all of that, he ended up going into a deep depression and ended up committing suicide.
During his lifetime, he had expressed his wishes to be a donor. His family knew that and his parents were really supportive of donation. They were very pleased to be able to carry out those wishes for him. And as his mom said, the ending of his life so young was tragic and devastating.
But this was something positive that could come out of it. So she said yes to donation and Mike was an organ, tissue and cornea donor in Wisconsin. And so he was able to help more than 100 people through his gift of donation. So after the donation, she received some letters from some of his organ recipients.
But then the letter that stood out the most to her was a letter from Colin Leppley from the middle of the country. And he was a 19-year-old in high school. He was very athletic, played every sport there was. Really into it going into a senior year.
He had an injury during one of his games and injured his knee. And so his surgeon informed him that he was going to need a transplant. That was the only option for him. The injury that he suffered was an osteochondral lesion of the medial femoral condyle.
That's a mouthful. So basically the only option, the only thing that could repair this for him, and again, a young man, 19 years old, would be to receive an aligraphed transplant. So there was a bit of a weight because with that kind of transplant, you actually do have to kind of wait for one that's the right fit. So whereas with a lot of tissue transplants, there's not that sort of issue.
But with this kind, it's a very specialized type of tissue graft. So there was a little bit of a weight for him. So he waited. He received the transplant.
And then afterward, Colin has really expressed to us how it really caused him to kind of step back and reassess the importance of being so appreciative for life. And he described himself as, I was just a typical 19 year old kid that I was really just kind of having fun and playing sports and goofing around. And this caused him to really seriously think about life more seriously. And so after his transplant, he and his mom talked and he said, I really want to send a thank you letter to my donor family.
So he did that. So he wrote a letter and it's just a wonderfully touching letter. And he sent this letter to Mike's family. He didn't know the name of his donor at the time, but sent a letter.
And Dorothy, Mike's mom received the letter and just said that that was one of the brightest days of her entire life. And it was just so touched by this letter and the fact that it was another young man that had received the transplant and it was something so positive that it was able to come out of that. So then when she got that letter, she wanted to force her to write back to Colin. So it was really important to her to be able to write back and let Colin know what Mike was like, what he enjoyed doing, what kind of person he was.
She got a lot of value out of being able to share Mike as a person with Colin. And Colin's mom was just very touched by this whole thing too because it's a mom. She was really able to relate with Dorothy as well and knew how important it was that Colin essentially got his life back. It wasn't a life saving procedure, but it really did completely restore his ability to be able to be active and participate in sports and really just live his life.
It's so amazing. Going back some years, we focus mainly on corresponding with organ donors, a lot of organ donor families with the recipients and the work that you guys are obviously doing to facilitate all of these communications and correspondents. It touches me and it's really cool how much it impacted Colin. Yeah.
And for Colin, you know, when he received the letter from Dorothy and I'll read just a little quote of it, the letter that Dorothy sent to Colin said, if you were wondering what kind of individual our son was, he was kind hearted and quiet and I know he would be very happy to know that part of him lives on in you. I hope his gift makes a positive difference in your life and that you go on to do all the things you dream of. So it was, you know, when Colin received that, that's again when he kind of stepped back and realized what a major gift he had received. And so he after that decided to go on into physical therapy and wanted, you know, he kind of directed his future career path.
And so after that, we were able to end up connecting them in person and were able to get all that on video. And it was just, it was amazing. And you know, the mom's getting to meet was really touching and, you know, Colin getting to meet this family and, you know, for Dorothy, she said she, she gets that letter out like probably once a week and reads this letter again and again. And now she actually, you know, these two families have a relationship.
They, you know, correspond via phone. Colin actually sends Dorothy Mother's Day cards. It's just something that, you know, has impacted both of these families forever. His gift really will go on living.
And what a way to celebrate new found relationships. Exactly. So it's just such a positive story and it's really impacted our whole organization and we've had them come and speak to our employees as well. It's another, you know, it's just a great way to continue motivating our staff that maybe aren't, you know, don't have that donor family connection every day.
You know, they're doing something else, you know, and behind the scenes of the organization beginning to see that, you know, that connection and really truly what this gift does every day. And that's amazing. I can't thank you enough for being here and sharing both Mike and Colin's story. Well, thank you so much.
It was a pleasure to be here today to share their story with you. We're continuing with our tissue focus today and we have our next guest is Colleen Kilkenny. She is the corporate communications manager for Allosaurus, which is located in Centennial Colorado. Right?
Centennial Colorado, just outside Denver. Gorgeous area. Well, Colleen, thank you so much for being here. And I know you've got a special story to share with us from your area.
I do. I do. I think you guys all know that working in this industry is really interesting and working in tissue processing is another level of interesting and I feel very blessed to have that opportunity at Allosaurus. What we get to see in terms of that unique blend of, you know, human compassion with science, I think is very unique.
And you guys really are at the front line of this. But when you get to see the solace that someone gets because their loved one was able to be a donor, it's really amazing. And so, you know, at Allosaurus, we kind of get to blend that compassion and then also see that transplantation side. And I know that today we're going to talk a little bit more just about the donation side, but it really is amazing what we get to see.
Part of my role at Allosaurus then is when you all have a donor family that is more interested in learning about tissue donation and transplantation, they'll come visit Allosaurus. And I've gotten to meet so many wonderful families in my almost seven years now at Allosaurus. And when I got this opportunity, which is awesome, it was really hard to decide which family I was going to talk about, which donor because each one of them is so special in such a different way, which I know you also understand. So today I'm going to talk about Garrett Rockway, which I believe you all have actually had the opportunity to meet the family.
Yes, we got the opportunity to meet Bruce and Tiffany last year in October. They did an amazing by-grad called Petal for Life and they stopped. Their stopping point was New Orleans, but they started all the way in Iowa City. Now, and easy.
Each day they honored a different donor and they honored two of ours, but let's talk more about Garrett now. Yeah. So I actually had the opportunity to first meet Bruce and Tiffany in the Adeline. I don't know if you got to meet Garrett's sister, but she is amazing.
She is one of the most amazing people I've met. But we met them through Iowa donor network, one of the OPOs we work with because I was scheduling them to come speak. We do an event at Allosaurus called the Awards of Excellence where we have a donor family come in and really help our staff connect to why we're all here, right? Deep in that base for our mission.
And you could even tell just in the process of emailing with them that when you met them that they were going to change your life. I'm sure you guys had that experience in meeting them too. So I'll talk a little bit about Garrett, which is so interesting knowing so much about someone that you have never met because by the time you're done with Bruce and Tiffany in Adeline, you really feel like you have known this person for their entire life. But Garrett was a typical 10 year old boy who loved to spend time with his friends.
He played Ice Wear every sport, baseball, soccer, basketball. He did Taekwondo. He was super caring. Of course, he loved his family, especially his sister.
He loved reading. He loved church. They always when you hear Bruce and Tiffany talk, they'll talk about the St. Louis Cardinals because that really Garrett's first love.
And also Kit-Cats. I still to this day cannot eat a Kit-Cat without thinking of him and them and the family so it makes it feel a little guilt-free when I'm delging. That's amazing that you've gotten to know him that well. You associate it with something.
It is. And I feel that that's how our staff are too when you hear them talk about Garrett or the family. I mean, every time they tell this story, every time they the Rockways share another donor story, like you said in Pelle for Life, it really is amazing. So in 2013 while Garrett was working on their property, they have a large property.
And with his father, he was actually struck by a falling tree. After some time, Bruce and Tiffany were told that he wasn't going to survive, they decided to donate his organs, corneas and tissue. So all of them, because they really felt that he would want to help as many people as possible. That was just the nature of this ten year old.
And for me, I feel like I've learned so much through Garrett about the impact that a ten year old can have. I mean, Bruce and Tiffany said, you know, five lives were saved through organ donation, site was restored for two people. And this is one of the most powerful ones I have chills even. I know you guys can't see that, but that 125 people were helped through his tissue.
Wow. 125 people, right? And these are the stories we just need to get out there more. This was primarily through cartilage.
So that's also something that you may find interesting that the cartilage that he had has such powerful healing properties. That's amazing. You know, I'm inspired by Garrett every day. Bruce and Tiffany, again, they're just so amazing, Adeline.
And you'll see that, you know, they're always going to be grieving. That's one thing. We've all lost people and that never goes away. But one thing about this job that stays with me at every minute is the power of human resilience.
Because when I'm having a bad day, I think of all of these people who go on and go on so strongly and so beautifully. It's that resilience that I see in them and the honesty they have. And I just feel so blessed to have them in my life now and to have known Garrett through them. I mean, it really is so powerful.
Very rewarding also. So rewarding. And I think everyone, you know, sitting here and your staff that I've met today, I mean, inspire me just listening to how passionate they are for what they do. And Bruce and Tiffany have really taken this passion to another level.
And they started on the Garrett and Brockway Foundation, Garrett's Path. And that was the pedal for life, I think. I think Garrett's Path made even sponsored that. And that's why they were so involved.
And so they really work on promoting, you know, not just donation awareness, but also in Garrett's honor to celebrate academics and kids and athletic opportunities. So Garrett's Path.org. I want to make sure I say that because everyone. So everyone for everybody?
Oh, yes, absolutely. It's G-A-R-R-E-T-T-S-P-A-T-H.org. Right. Because even just me giving them this little bit of information, I know people are going to want to go somewhere and learn more.
I wanted to end today. You know, when Bruce and Tiffany spoke, I remember being very stoic for most of it because they're at an event where in your corporate communication you planned it. You're in event mode, you're going strong, you got all the details. And then he read this.
And I, it was just so beautiful and so amazing and just such a testament to who Bruce is and who their family is. So if you don't mind, I'd like to read out. It is now my turn to follow Garrett's Path. My footsteps will be in his footsteps because I love him as a father, loves his son.
I take great comfort knowing where this path will lead me. And although I cannot hear his voice or hold his hand, I know Garrett is right here with me, loving me, protecting me and leading me on this path to heaven. So beautiful. You're supposed to bring the Kleenex in.
I know I'm sorry. They're in my purse. I know. I know.
But again, I can't say enough about this family. I've had the opportunity to meet so many of them and I feel honored that I was able to even just share this little bit today. Yeah. I love how they don't just keep it within themselves or within their community.
They're sharing it all over the US and all over the world, but through the pedal for life and his foundation, they just continue to try to reach as many people as possible so that maybe somebody else doesn't feel so alone or can be inspired by the gift of donation. Absolutely. And I know that they already said that pedal for life is coming to Denver. That's where they're going to start next year.
So we get to host them, which again, such an honor. So and of course, we have a lot of cyclists in Colorado that won't be able to. We'll be excited about biking that many miles. That'll be great.
Hey, Joey, maybe we can tell you'll understand. I'm not going to plug now. We'll come to a live podcast. Thanks so much again, Kelly, for being here and sharing here at Story and the Brockaway Story.
Thank you for the opportunity. To continue with our tissue theme today, I'm very pleased to introduce another guest. Her name is Mary Beth Aubrey. She is a nurse and she's a recovery partner and donor development director of community tissue services out of Dayton, Ohio.
Welcome. Thank you for letting me be here. It's wonderful. Mary Beth, would you tell us a little bit about community tissue services?
Yes. Community tissue services is located in Dayton, Ohio. We're part of the community blood center there. And what we do is we work with many partners across the country, OPOs and tissue banks, that entrust us to make their donors gift into transplantable form, restore mobility, help people have a better quality of life.
We also do have our own branches that recover tissue in their local areas from donors that entrust us with their gift. And they're located in Portland, Boise, Idaho, Medford, and also Toledo in Dayton, Ohio. I love a big territory. Yeah, I'm glad to be here.
It is a big territory. So Brittany's Story is one of the stories that we feature on our 50 lives.org website. And we say as many 50 lives or more can be enhanced or transformed through the gift of tissue donation. And not as many people are familiar with how people can have restored mobility through tissue donation.
And Brittany's story is one of the special ones. Now she's walking well after knee surgery when she was 19 years old. She tore her ACL, which is your anterior cruciate ligament. It's the ligament in your knee that helps it move back and forth.
And she tore that when she was skiing. She didn't have her surgery right away. Two months later, she was with her dad. And unfortunately, there was a horrific accident and her father died.
And when we did follow up with community tissue services, her mother Diane asked us when we asked if there's any way we can be a further help to her family. She shared that Brittany was going to have an upcoming surgery and was there any way we could help facilitate Brittany getting her dad's tendon to help Brittany regain a better quality side. So CTS was able to facilitate that. Dr.
Kevin Shea was the doctor that helped fix Brittany's knee. She's now a nurse and she's able to have an improved quality of life. She's married, she horseback rides, she skis. And just like the many recipients who benefit from this special gift of tissue donation, Brittany now has a more normal life and is able to be active.
Wonderful. From our organ perspective, you see people directly donate. Sometimes when we talk to donor families, they'll say, well, yes, the donation and have my brother or sister or whatever relative needs a kid near and needs a liver. And so we facilitate that.
For us, it is up there for us one of the most fulfilling things that we can do because we know that we're doing it for someone that they know, we're helping that facilitation. For you, when you mention this with the tissue side, it's not even something that I've ever even given a second thought. So to me, it is beyond amazing to me thinking about that from a tissue perspective. Yeah, I don't think I've maybe heard of one other story like that.
I did not know you could direct donate or direct request. I loved one's tissue. That's just amazing. We encourage if there is a request like that to make the request as soon as possible, if the donor family would have that special request because there are so many recipients who are in need of special tissues to restore mobility.
We want to make sure that that special gift from their loved one would be available for their family member. Luckily, this tissue was still available. Her father's tissue was available. We have had requests when the family's waited too long and unfortunately it's gone on to help restore lives of many other people and we don't have it available for them.
So when we were talking earlier, you shared a little bit about Brittany kind of had a special message or a sentiment for her dad. Would you mind sharing that with our audience? Yes, it is really remarkable. As she heals, I'm Brittany had shared how thankful she was for her dad, who was a pastor and a rancher and a donor who helped her.
But what she was most thankful for was his life and his faithfulness and that he shared all that with the people that are left here. And she said that when she prays every morning, she sort of prays on his knees now because she was able to get the tendon in her knee. And one friend said a really profound thing that when she received that, she's praying on her daddy's knees and continuing on in his legacy. So I thought that was a really, really touching moment to share with everyone.
Yeah, so symbolic when you think about praying and kneeling in prayer. And what her and her dad's life was about being a pastor and sharing that. Now through his daughter, he's able to continue that on. That's wonderful.
You know, Mary Beth, just to hear a story like this from the recipient's perspective, I think is really just wonderful for our audience to hear. And for us to hear too, we do get letters a lot of times through our family services department. And each one, it's kind of interesting as they'll start with, this may not mean a whole lot, but what they don't understand is this means a great deal. You know, when it comes down to having someone that you have a better life because of somebody saying yes to donation.
So, and you're sharing this story is absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome. And I encourage you to go to our 50Lives.org website.
We have the Wall of Life there, and it has many, many recipient stories as well as donor family stories. The work we do is people working in the industry of organ and tissue donation. We're able to see how it really does touch donor families' lives and help them know how their loved ones remember. And then recipients have a place to share their stories and their gratitude for the donor family's gift.
It sounds a lot like our hero story section on our website. So for those listening, please visit 50LivesFIFTYLives.org so you can read more of these inspiring stories. And in today's Family Support segment, we have our very own Blake Smith, Lopez, Tissue Recovery Manager, and he and Sally are going to share with us something that we're doing here for our tissue donors and their families right before recovery. Hi Blake.
Good to see you again. Hi Sally. It's nice to be back on the podcast. You know, we're just talking about the different things that we do for donor families.
And I think that you've come up with a great idea, maybe with some other staff members about how to honor the donors prior to recovery. Yes, Sally. The team and I are really excited about this addition to our tissue recovery process. The initial thought for this new process was sort of a checklist to go through before each case to ensure that we had the information that was required and make sure we didn't miss any steps along the way.
Through discussion about the checklist, so to speak, someone in our hospital development staff named Sam had a great idea to honor the donor and to allow the families of the donor to get involved in that process. The way it works is whenever the family is doing the authorization with our call center, the call center offers them the opportunity to say a little bit about the family. It could be anything from a prayer or it could be something as simple as she was a good mob. There's several things that they could do.
This comes about through the call center. The call center that calls center relates it to you guys or does the family record it or how does that work? You know, once they have this information, they'll call in on speakerphone through the recovery team. What kind of feedback have you gotten from your teammates since they've started this?
At first, there was some hesitation because obviously this is a very emotional event right before we're about to start a recovery. And those of you who are in the recovery field or just a medical personnel, you kind of have to have this task at hand feeling whenever you're on the job. So that way you give them the best possible care that they can have. This was a perfect way to in real time give them just an idea of the impact that they're making by just discussing how the family feels and knowing a little bit more about the donor.
Like I said, it could be something as simple as he was a great mom and this meant a lot to her. And it just takes you out of that task at hand moment and allows you to understand the brevity of what it is that you're taking place in right now. It's really neat and the team has owned it. You know, it's a part of the process now.
And you know, there's there's some times where it can get emotional, but you know, that's why we're here. That's the bigger picture job. That's why we all work at LOPA. Well, it sounds a lot like our connected purpose.
You know, when we have meetings and such when we make sure we have some kind of story or a real time connected purpose. Exactly what it is that grounds us to exactly how serious and how wonderful at the same time, what we're doing, you know, the impact that it has. And I think too that I, Blake and I have talked about this, that the number of tissue donor families that I have personally spoken with that says, wow, that was just so kind and compassionate that you all would take the time to honor our loved one through the memories or through whatever, like you just said, whether she was a good mom. And it's really nice to hear that when we're doing our follow up phone calls because, you know, just as we've talked about over time here, we want families to know that we value and honor what they're doing.
And I think just this little step forward in this particular area has made a major impact that you said, Joey, on how families feel about what we're doing here. I think it's a great thing. And the team couldn't be more excited about this process. We were talking earlier before this.
There's been a few instances that were pretty emotional. And I like to share a couple of them because I think that people deserve to know, the families deserve to know the steps that these team members take without being prompted. There was a particular family that mentioned a quote from the donor's favorite gospel song. Well, the call center staff sharing that day, she was a singer.
And she said, they gave us a quote, but I'm a singer and I'm going to sing this. And look, I like to say that we've got some manly men on the team, right? Yeah, the tissue recovery team. We're manly, right?
Well, Derek, it was a big guy. The only thing he could say after this was, that was beautiful. One of those moments that was, it was on our court line. So we actually got to save that and share that with other people.
And that's just one instance. That's just one of the many stories that we had. Wow, I like his name, his pulse. Yeah, right.
Another example of just one of those stories, there was a local donor. He was actually a singer. He really had pride in his Cajun and Southern Louisiana heritage. And he was a drummer as well, he wrote a song and the family asked us to play it during the donor time out.
So what we did was we pulled it up on YouTube and everyone enjoyed the song that he had written right before the case started. It was, you know, it meant a lot to the team. It helped us learn a little bit more about the donor and how much the family really took pride in their Louisiana heritage. And it was just one of those stories that's great.
And no one would ever even know that that happened, but because we were doing this process and because the team was able to share this, it was just a great experience. That's wonderful. That's amazing. But like, thank you so much for coming in and sharing those with us.
And please tell the team, thank you too, for going above and beyond. That's no problem at all. We really appreciate everything you guys do. And thanks for the podcast.
This is awesome. As we do in every podcast, we are honoring our hero. And today's hero is Thomas Gray. Yes.
Thomas was diagnosed with anencephaly, a fatal neuro tube defect that disrupts the development of the skull and brain. Maybe it's with this condition typically dying childbirth or within minutes or hours of being born. The Gray's plan to carry the pregnancy to term and contact the Washington Regional Transplant Community, the Oregon Recovery Agency for the Washington, D.C. area.
To see if Thomas might be able to donate, they learned that Thomas would likely be too small at birth to donate any organs, eyes or tissues for transplant, but that he may be able to donate for medical research. The Gray's completed the donation consent forms and WRTC looked for research projects that might be a match for Thomas' donation. Thomas and his brother, Calum, were born on March 23, 2010. The twins were both born alive.
Thomas lived for nearly six days and died at home. After a hospice nurse contacted WRTC, they sent a van to the Gray's home and transported Thomas to a children's National Medical Center where his liver and eyes were recovered. Thomas' gifts were received and utilized by major research universities. Sarah Gray, his mom, who now works for AATB or the American Association of Tissue Banks, as a director of communication, said that these discoveries helped her family to heal.
In her words, she said, the way I see it, my son got into Harvard, Duke and Penn, and he has a job inside on it. He has a colleague and co-workers who are on the top of their field. And they need him in order to do their job. He is relevant to this community.
And I only hope my life can be as relevant. Wow, that's really powerful. You can learn more about the Gray's story in a book that was just published by Harper Collins this week called A Life Everlasting, the Extraordinary Story of One Boys' Gift to Medical Science. Available where books are sold.
You can learn more on sarahgray.com. That's S-A-R-A-H-G-R-A-Y dot com. And we now pause to say thank you, Thomas, for the gift of life. Joey, we got an interesting question online submitted to us from a student and said that he's doing some research for a project.
And some sites say that Tissue donation can help up to 50 people and others say up to 100. Which number is right? Well, it really depends. It really is case by case.
Truly, it is closer to up to 100. It varies whether what OPO or what organ procurement organization or Tissue Recovery that you work with, how many processors that you work with. And then of course, each person individually. I mean, if there's any infection or any issues with certain graphs, it may be more on a low end versus someone who's healthier would be on a higher end.
So it does vary from case to case. So that's why we kind of keep it wide range, 50 to 100. Yeah, but I imagine to each person that receives just that one gift means the world. You know, too, we get a lot more letters, correspondence from Tissue recipients to donor families.
You know, it wasn't that many years ago. It was not encouraged. Now, lots more people do send letters thanking them for whatever tissue they may have received. But you know, out of that thing comes, what could I get an update?
And so we'll contact the Tissue bank and then they find out that their loved one has helped multiple peoples across the United States and some go outside of the country. But you know, and they go, oh my gosh, I had no idea that my loved one could help that many folks. And then I think it gives them a whole new sense of pride and maybe more peace, you know, because they found out, wow, that's a lot of people that's being helped. That's amazing.
That's amazing. And remember, if you have a question, we'd love to hear from you at info at lippa.org. You can call our phone line. Sally, what's that number?
504-648-3477. We'd love to hear from you. And another episode has come to a close. What a doozy.
Oh, and I have such an appreciation for Lori now. What does she do? Lori, you're welcome to have your job back. I have to say you did a great job.
Yes, you did. I'm glad I'm glad the checks in the mail, Joey. We didn't skip a beat here. We had some amazing guests today.
Yeah, I want to first thank Erin Martin of RTI for sharing a story of Mike Erickson and of course his wife Dorothy and her correspondence with Colin and how that not only impacted Colin, you know, physically with the transplant, but how the correspondence impacted him in a way that gave a new appreciation for life itself. Absolutely. And then we had Colleen Kilkenny from Allysource and she shared Garrett Brockaway and the Brockaway's family and how they just continued to give back and promote donation and promote the gift of life. And then we had Mary Beth Aubrey with Community Tissue Services out of Dayton, Ohio.
You know, it was really good to hear how the different tissue organizations are encouraging and getting people together and now meeting. And, you know, it's one of those things that we kind of have been doing with our organ donor families, but now for the tissue recipients to actually meet, you know, the donor families to share their stories and the story she shared with Brittany, who was a tissue recipient of her father. Pretty powerful stuff going on there, but, you know, just to know that this is happening around the country, I hope will certainly stimulate people to think about, gee, maybe if I can't be an organ donor, I certainly could be a tissue donor and look at how many lives I could be able to help. Absolutely.
And I agree, Sally, the communication's wonderful. Just a few years ago, it was almost taboo. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
And of course, I want to thank our very own Blake Smith, our Tissue Recovery Manager here at LOPA, for giving us a little bit of insight on their new donor time out process and how it's had such a positive effect on everyone involved. Yup, donor families and staff alike. Yup. Thanks for tuning in.
And we hope that you'll share this podcast with your friends and family. Email us at info at lupa.org or you can call us on our hotline. What's up, number Sally? Oh, that number is 50483477.
We'd love to hear from you. Go out and do something you wouldn't normally do to help us make life happen.