Hello and welcome to the Get to Life podcast where we have conversations about organ tissue and eye donation I'm Lori Steel and I'm Joey Bujuro and I'm Sally Chentry and we are all glad that you tuned in and we are smiling Can you hear us smiling? Right because this is a big day. It is we are celebrating a silver and ever is it so it is? 25 guys can you imagine this is our 25th podcast?
That's crazy. Yeah, well you helped us get here This is amazing So we're gonna kind of take a look back at the amazing guests that conversations what we learned a little look back today here on The gifted life smiling just right smiling and of course we always have a recovery segment So we're gonna be talking to the president of the I Bank Association of America about National Eye Donor Month Okay, Sally's gonna fill us in we always learn from Sal So we'll talk about family services and how we support our donor families and of course as we do in every episode We'll be honoring a hero. It's our favorite segment there. We'll also be getting you more involved We have this number now a hotline.
Okay, so we're number 25. We have a hotline things are moving in the right direction you guys Yeah, so the number is it's 504-648-3477 at 504-648-3477 Sally do you feel like you should like sing it like do you think you need something like that? I can't sing it. I would think it's dirty.
I'm gonna stick with Steve Perry on that way So we have this hotline number we want you to call in we want you to add to this podcast and today We'll start revealing some of those phone calls So love our partners from every walk of life and let me tell you the podcast needs to continue to travel out there because we're hitting some milestones Thanks to you. We're easy to find actually absolutely You know you can find us on iTunes Google Play pocketcast or any of your favorite apps There you go. We need you to rate subscribe do all those fun things and a lot of what we talk about here You can see on our social media sites so like on Facebook or donate live Louisiana Twitter Instagram at donate life la We want this to be interactive share your thoughts with us you guys ready to get going well And you know what's even the best part is some of my friends from Indiana are now following the podcast and they're very very interested Why absolutely I love it you're bringing in your peeps. They're learning more as we learn more There you go It only takes one person to spread the word and that is what's happening.
We love it. All right so much to get to here on this 25th episode you guys ready absolutely ready. Let's do this We are celebrating here on the gifted life. This is our 25th episode And we are all smiles, right?
Because can we just go back for a moment to win this all started was on paper had an idea sounded great How are we gonna put this into play exactly? We had all kind of ideas everybody brainstorm came together and and of course one of my big parts was hey I'm not gonna be speaking because people can't understand this cage and accent I think he's host. Hi, you know, I miss one of the meetings and I'm host Happen that happened and so there were so many ideas and this was gonna be a great learning opportunity This was a new way to reach people that we had never reached before and great ideas And then we had to put it into action right and so everybody had their different ideas You know when you bring everybody to the table or everybody has their own ideas But the one thing that everybody agreed on across the board was that we honor hero and we educate. Yeah, let's be in our favorite segment You know to be able to honor the heroes, you know Of Lopa the ones that have left the legacy and save so many lives through their their generosity and their generous gift and we love the interaction That we're getting with the donor families the recipients Sally You're getting a lot of feedback about people listening and what they're learning a lot alone Focusing on the part that I do which is very nice.
Yeah, and so we're all learning about everybody coming together to make life happen How does everybody do that? Everybody has that special talent there so we started and we said okay? We got episode one and are bell we're nervous oh my goodness go back and listen to it Yeah, and so so we've all grown together and now we're looking at you know over 18,000 downloads and climbing daily Which is amazing. We thought we would impact folks in our own state in Louisiana, but this is beyond us It's beyond national now, you know We started working with our local partners, the I-Banks that are here locally, and of course our internal staff, to try to educate as much as we can the public.
And then we realized, well, this is bigger than just Lobo, and this is bigger than Louisiana. We thought initially that it was going to be a statewide thing, and then we realized it was going to be a national thing, and not only has it become national, it's become international. We've had people listening from five different continents, from Africa, Asia, Europe, you know, of course, North America, and South America. So we were thinking initially, you know, trying to get through 64 parishes.
And now we've got five continents that we're being listened to. So it's just amazing all the people that we've been able to reach and how far it's reached out to. So we started getting larger than life personalities like Carl Lewis, who's won multiple, multiple, I think, 10 if I'm not mistaken, gold medals in the Olympics. And who remembers him saying, look at yourself, naked in the mirror.
Do you remember his word of advice? Yes, that was it. I'm just saying go back and listen to that episode. I mean, we learn and we take from them.
And on the same episode, we had he and one of his best friends, Jeffrey Marks, who's a Pulitzer prize winning author. They have such larger than life guests here on this, our podcast. It's just inspiring to me. I couldn't imagine this a year ago when we were thinking about it.
I think of all the people you're reaching through interviewing different individuals from different walks of life that perhaps would never even thought about this before, which brings all the awareness then to organ and tissue, eye donation, which is a fantastic venue for people. And you know, you can read stories all day, you can read facts, that kind of thing. But for me, when we interviewed Face Transplant recipient, Richard Norris, it was us, our trio, talk to him, that just kind of right at all home, you know, it just brings it to life. And that's what we try to do here.
Yeah, I mean, to be able to meet him, personally meet him, the first full face transplant and to hear how much it impacted him, not only physically, but psychologically, the place that he was before his transplant, the place that he was in. And then now post-transplant on how he goes around and he speaks to audiences. He's been on nationally-senicated programs. And for him to give us 15 minutes of his time or 20 minutes, it was so amazing.
Well, and for him to be able to talk about meeting all the other recipients of the donor that he received his transplant from and how they've all become a family, I think is very important for people to hear that also. So this has been a learning journey for me, and I've heard that from several of our listeners as well. But if you're just joining us, go back. And if you have time, listen to all of these guests.
I mean, we teamed with national organizations as well. And our one goal and our CEO was here, Kelly Ranham. It's for donation. It's for people.
It's to save lives. And that's what we've been doing. So it's been an amazing journey. We're here, 25 episodes.
And we want it to be more interactive. We've got the hotline now. We have ways for you to communicate with us. We're going to be sharing some of that.
But that's what it's all about. So it's all about. It's all about journey. Get into it.
Send us emails. Call our hotline. Let us know. It is about you, the listener.
We're trying to give as much education as we can if we don't know what your interests are about donation. We're going to hear ourselves to that. So definitely let us know. Shoot us some questions, statements, whatever you want to know about.
We'll try to tackle it. And we have to thank those people. I mean, we get the airtime, me, Joey, Sally. But we have to thank Troy, who helps us sound great sometimes.
Right? You know, and does the editing. We have Kirsten Hines at Lopez well, who's helping us keep flowing in the right positive direction. We have Shalan, who helps us put together our agendas here.
But it's a team effort. We're all committed. And we're looking now at about a year of doing this. And we're excited about what's to come next.
Because look what we were able to accomplish. We have a couple of people in a room with a couple of pieces of paper and some big ideas. Watch out. Bigger and better.
Bigger and better. I like it. We're going to follow Sally's lead. All right, the gift of life.
More to come. In today's community segment, we are focusing the light on National Eye Donor Month to raise eye donation awareness. That's right. We've got a friend of mine, Kevin Corcoran.
He's the president of the Eye Bank Association of America. Yeah, we had the opportunity to talk to him over the phone. Let's listen in. Joining us now by phone, we have the president and CEO of the Eye Bank Association of America.
So lots of learn, Joe. Yeah, Laurie. So we have here with us today, Kevin Corcoran. He's the CEO and president of the EBAA, the Eye Bank Association of America.
And he's here to tell us a little bit about National Donor Eye Month. How are you, Kevin? Great. Thanks, Joey.
Thanks for talking to you. Well, thank you for coming on. What exactly does EBAA do? What's their function and who are they associated with?
Absolutely. We are. As you said, the Eye Bank Association of America. We've got 88 Eye Banks in the United States, another dozen Eye Banks around the world.
All Eye Banks are 501C3 non-profit organizations who are dedicated to recovering corneal tissue from donors after they've passed preparing it for corneal transplant surgery and then providing it to the surgeon's who will then transplant this corneal tissue into the eyes of folks who have either injury or disease have lost their sight. We provided about 50,000 corneas for transplant here in the United States last year, another 25,000 corneas overseas because we fulfill all of the demand here in the United States. There are no waiting lists. We provide that overseas.
And another about 25,000 corneas that we provide for research and education, identify the causes and hope cures for these corneal diseases and also use it to train. That's amazing. And just the statistics alone. So about my attention.
And that's one of the things that you try to do in March is to increase the awareness of cornea donation and increase the registry, right? So you know that's kind of be creative to get folks' attention and you guys have been working on that for quite some time. That's exactly right. March is National Eye Donor Month.
We've been celebrating National Eye Donor Month in March since 1983. And 83 Ronald Reagan made it National Eye Donor Month, made March National Eye Donor Month. So we've been doing it every year since then. And the goal is to increase the awareness of what we do, what our members do, and to get folks to register to be organized and to shoot donors and to go on to their state registry and register as donors.
Most people think about that. That's something they do at the Department of Motor Vehicles. And it's the heart or the check box or whatever it is on your driver's license to say that you are a donor. That is the first step in the process, both for I-Banks and for Oregon and T-Shabanks as well.
Whenever an individual dies, the hospital, the more wherever they are, they will contact the I-Banks and the T-Shabng and the organization of the Oregon Banks to let them know that they've got a perspective. And the first thing the I-Banks is going to do is look into the donor registry to see if this individual... We recover, obviously. We've got up to 24 hours after they've passed away.
So if we know that they're a donor, then they've given that authorization. We will contact their next-of-kin. So we're at Sergeant Dolan. So we're at the right now across the country, a little bit more than half the adult population.
No, half the time we're able to go to the authorization from the family is very frequently. It's only we get their authorization. Time frame wise, it's not quite as traumatic as are seen on the organ side. Right, Kevin.
And one of the other things is from an acceptance criteria, we've talked quite a bit about eye organ and tissue donation and the recovery acceptance criteria. And can you expound upon the fact that with eye recovery, you actually have a lot wider net more opportunity to be able to donate whereas organ and tissue it is a little bit more limited. That's correct. Health doesn't have a blood supply.
It gets its oxygen by diffusion with the air. So we have fewer rule-ups than they have on the tissue in the organ side. We're able to recover, generally we're able to recover from patients who have, which would be a rule out on the organ and tissue side. There are other medical conditions that would preclude you from being a rind donor that we're able to recover.
That's one of the reasons why we have a larger supply of tissue and demand. And that's something that Laurie and I talked quite a bit about is that the most important part of all of this is that you don't rule yourself out. A lot of people, when they go into the communities and educate, they talk to Laurie and Laurie, you can speak of this more than I can obviously, but they say, yeah, well nobody would want anything from me. But what is our standard answer is you can't rule yourself out because you never know you can still leave a legacy whether it be organ, tissue or eye donation.
Yeah, that's why we always push back. Yeah, we want to let folks know. I mean, for example, while most of my eye banks will have an upper age limit of about age 75 for corneas that they'll recover, research that was presented at one of our meetings last year found that corneas from folks who are age between 75 and 85 still have almost the exact same success rate as corneas for folks who are younger. So there's really almost no limit to who can be a cornea donor.
It certainly has nothing to do with the quality of your vision or some folks ask me to the colors of the eyes, not or that doesn't matter. There are very few reasons why you couldn't be a donor. And that's why we're always pushing education is key. So together we can help spread that message even further.
I know you guys, especially in March, really utilize social media as do we to help let folks know what's going on, get involved, learn the facts, right? Do you guys are doing Facebook and Twitter, those kinds of things, and maybe Snapchat? Yeah, that's correct. I mean, one of the advantages of Snapchat is it's a very visual medium which is perfect for an organization like ours is dealing with vision.
So our eye banks across the country, we've got three eye banks in Louisiana and they provide us stories about their donors and then their donor family members and the recipients as well. And we like to get pictures and images of those folks that we can integrate into our social media efforts to put a face on the issue and demonstrate how important vision to the lives of everybody. And we hear those stories as well. There are partners increasing the registry here.
Can't say enough great things about them. I'll talk about your through my eyes contest. I love how you guys are able to use some of what's turned in in a different form for like Christmas cards, for example. I love that.
Yeah, thank you. So the through my eyes contest is an art contest where we invite cornea recipients and donor family members to submit to us images that illustrate their journey. So for the recipients, they will send us photographs, pictures that they've drawn, paintings that they've made, videos that they've shot that illustrate kind of their celebration of being able to see again. We've been doing this for a couple of years and about two years ago.
We had one gentleman who sent in this winter scene of a card and a lot of snow cover tree and I looked at that. That looks just like a card. And that was again in February March. And I held on to that idea and that holiday time we took that card and we used it not only as our holiday card but also as a card that we made available to all of our eye banks that we could send it out to their support of folks who they're involved with.
And so they'd be able to send a card that was produced by somebody who benefited from a cornea and it really did a great job of it. It'll impact that cornea back the site to this gentleman who could produce this kind of artwork which is really full. So that sounds very fascinating as first eye hero but where can I go to find these beautiful pictures and everything you've got here? You can get access to all of our content through our website which is restoresite.org.
R-E-S-T-O-R-E-S-I-G-H-T.org. We also have our Facebook page just look at that by Bank Association of America on Facebook. You'll get your images there. The Snapchat program is new for us this year so it's really rolling out with National Eyedurn Month so look for that the link will be through our website but we don't have a specific address for that yet we're just getting it rolling as we speak.
We're on the cutting edge. I love it. All right so restoresite.org and if there's something that you heard that you want to learn more about and we can maybe take that to Kevin or through our Eyedurn Eye Bank partners here at Louisiana. Contact us at info at loca.org.
In our Family Services segment today we are talking about honoring all yeses. Okay so let me tell you guys in the community when we're out there and we educate on donation most people say yes they want to help save lives to organ eye and tissue donation and if they go and get that red heart in Louisiana on their license that spells hope for so many families who are waiting on a life saving organ transplant. Now unfortunately in some cases transplantation not possible. Right sometimes whether you're talking about maybe a tissue donor someone wanted to be a donor and they were able to possibly be a tissue donor but then there are occasions where our tissue team may arrive and do a physical assessment and then find out that there's maybe too much trauma to the tissue sites you know to the donation sites.
That person's still a hero and I rise and the same thing with an organ donor you know a lot of times a family or again that person may have wanted to be a donor and they said yes so we'll go through a series of tests and sometimes we find out that the organs may be further damaged from the trauma than we expected or maybe they're in some type of organ failure or maybe they have the disease processes that we weren't aware of at the beginning of the case and in all these cases we want to honor them and help support the family just the same and that's where our Family Services and Sally comes in. Thank you for bringing that up Joey because we don't want any family members to think that we do not honor and really appreciate the fact that they're loved one through themselves or through the family suggested donation and so what we do is we want to reach out to everyone and Nyla who is our newest member of the Family Services staff is most interested in reaching out and speaking with families who did consent to donation but for whatever the reasons their loved one was not able to be a donor and let them know how much that we want them to be part of our LOPA family and we will provide them the same services that we provide to every other organ and or tissue donor family member and we want families to know that it's that yes that we most appreciate because it does give others hope and we just want all the families to know that we are here for them and if we may answer any questions or any concerns that they might have please let us know we'll be glad to help in any way we can. And you can send questions or comments to info at LOPA.org we also have that hotline number that's 5046483477 get involved here on the gifted life we are honoring the yes so important more to come here on the gifted life we mentioned this at the beginning of this podcast and every podcast is so important to us that we honor a hero and today we focus on Dustin Mason. This hero story was written by his sister Lacey Killian Dustin was a fun loving hardworking father and husband his energy and zest for life were evident to everyone who knew him he could always put a smile on your face Dustin's legacy is carried out through his two sons Cody and Tanner and his lung recipient mr.
Jackie mr. Jackie was able to spend countless more years with his beautiful wife four daughters and mini grandkids that may have been cut short if not for Dustin's heroic actions because of Dustin saving mr. Jackie all four of his girls have signed up to become organ donors Dustin loved and lived life to the fullest every day he was here on this earth he is greatly loved and missed by all who knew him. And great picture great picture you want to see more learn more about Dustin Mason visit our website LOPA.org slash faces of donation and there you can see many more heroes as well at this point in the podcast let's pause today and say thank you to Dustin Mason for the gift of life.
At this point in the podcast we're kind of excited okay we have this hotline and the number is 5046483477 I'm working on a jingle so we gotta do it anyway so we wanted to be interactive we asked folks to call us leave messages we were going to use those in the podcast and those started to pour in. So now you're here Antonio Miller who's a volunteer for us let's listen to his story. Yes I'm good evening this is Antonio Miller and I'm coming along with my wife to Alan Miller I just wanted to know that on March 24 2003 I was her kidney donor and March 25th 2006 we were married so the total amount of time for the transplant which is at the special kidney transplant from 2003 to 2015 has been 12 and a half years so we're thankful to God for that also we're all advocates for LOPA and donate life we love you guys take care of you bless bye bye. Love me some Antonio Miller we know him as Tony in the Baton Rouge community Tony and his wife Sue this year will celebrate 10 years of wedded lists so they tell me I love it and the 13th anniversary of the kidney transplant because he said he gave her the kidney an incredible perfect match and then they got married so we love love love that story folks love to hear that story but what I love about this couple Joe is that on their wedding anniversary they are going to have a little celebration but they want to raise organ donor awareness as well they always put that in everything that they do which is incredible so we love that and we want to hear more of these stories share this so that we can share with the world basically call us.
Absolutely 504 6483477 that's 504 6483477. Do it today hard to believe but our 25th episode has come to a close 25 guys. It's amazing that's awesome. Wonderful and look what great education pieces you've said to people and given to people that otherwise would never have heard it.
I'm on a great job by everybody. Yeah so thanks thanks to everybody who participates thanks to those who call in our guests couldn't do it without the teamwork. That's right you know we want to thank Kevin Carker and the president of the I Bank Association of America for talking a little bit about National Eye Donor Month and of course we want to thank Antonio Miller for calling in and telling us a little bit about his story. Yeah we love the feedback we love to share these stories don't forget about our website at lowbut.org learn the facts go out and make a difference do something to spread the word about donation that you don't normally do you can do that today.