Hello and welcome to the Gifted Life Podcast where we have conversations about organ tissue and eye donation. I'm Laurie Steele. I'm Joey Bujro. And I'm Sally Chantry.
And we are so grateful that you choose to tune in to the Gifted Life and what we hope you do is spread the word. Lots of great things happening on this podcast. We're partnering with some great folks all to help save and enhance lives. We're going to be talking about our friend at the Southern Eye Bank celebration of sight coming up.
Why do we do it? Why is it so important? You'll find out. And in our family support segment we're going to be talking about self talk.
What is it and how can you put the good use? We'll also be honoring heroes here on the Gifted Life and so much more. We want this to be interactive. We want you to be able to call in be a part of the show.
That's why the hotline was created. Yes, our hotline number is 504648 3477. That's 504648 3477. And the number really works.
I tried calling in Sal. Everybody got great compliments. It was great. It was great.
I know. This lady was just really she found everything so interesting and helpful. Yeah, animated. So it works.
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Everywhere. We're on any of your favorite podcast apps whether it's iTunes, Google Play, Mero, Pocket Cast, whatever you guys want to use, you'll find us. Yeah, make sure you rate, subscribe, do all those fun things. Not only being listened to here in Louisiana but across the country and across the world, which is an amazing feast.
Five continents and climbing right now. And climbing. We're trying to get to Australia. And we love it, but we can't do it without your help.
So join in and let's go on this adventure today. In our community segment today, we are talking about National Eye Donor Month and what Southern Eye Bank is doing to honor donors and we have a special guest in house. Yes, we do. We have with us here today Billy Beurus.
He is the executive director of Southern Eye Bank and they are putting on especially event tomorrow. Tomorrow. Because this month is National Eye Donor Awareness Month. So you must be very busy.
So we appreciate you taking the time to help us educate and enlighten. So thank you. Thank you for having me here. Yes, it's a great month for National Eye Donor Awareness.
We are putting on the picnic tomorrow to get the site celebration for Southern Eye Bank. This is the eighth year that we are putting it on. We started kind of modeling a little bit after Loba with the agency with some of their donor families. We want to thank our donor families for everything they've done over the years.
We do it just for the previous year because there are a lot of eye donors every year. It's incredible. Yeah, the number of donors every year is amazing and the people that we've just been on are just incredible and so we're here to thank them for everything. They do not only for the people of their community but also across the country and across the world where some of those colonies go.
So you talked about a lot of eye donors. I know in here with Loba we've had a record number of donors last year in 2015 as well as a record number of people signing up on the list. So I would imagine you guys probably saw similar improvements as well. We have.
We've actually seen it over the past few years. Definitely the collaborations with Loba have turned into such a positive for both education on eye tissue and organ donation as well as actually getting the actual donors. Last year we had about 690 donors which is pretty high number of donors for us. We covered the entire southern part of the state as well as other parts of the northern part of central and just the number of donors, the number of these families have given of themselves to really donate is incredible to us every year.
So we've consistently gone up with that collaboration with the education and we've been able to help more people every year. Yeah, we think education is key. Absolutely. We see that across the board and so we appreciate you partnering with us not only today but throughout the year.
So we know you guys tomorrow are hosting this event which I'm sure is inspiring but across the country too. I mean it's national eye donor month so there must be other events. There are other events. I mean there are 77 eye banks across the country who put on different events during this time period.
Not everyone puts on a picnic like we do. Our bank association of America, our governing body, they have been kind of pushing for national donor awareness on the start of 1983 with President Ronald Reagan has been going on now for 33 years and it's kind of really to honor those donors and recipients. Each eye bank puts on their own events. The national association helps with what we're doing.
We've actually had the national association calm down to New Orleans and attend the event. We've given presentation to help other eye banks put on events as well because we really believe that our donor families are so important and everything they've done for us is just incredible. So we want to thank them again for everything. Well we wish you nothing but the best tomorrow and also just more information for you.
If you missed it on our last episode we talked with the Eye Bank Association of America. So the CEO president was there so we all work together to make life happen and you get to hear what it is that we're doing in each area. So great collaboration, great partnership all with one focus and that's to make life happen and save and enhance life. Absolutely.
Thank you. I mean it's just an amazing event and Kevin is a great speaker and a great proponent for all Oregon Eye and Tishton Nation. We're for the other organizations. Go team.
If people would like to have more information you can either go to our website which is southern eyebank.com. We have a lot of information both for the donor picnic as well as just general education about becoming an eye donor as well as an organ and tissue donor. We direct links to the registry pages as well. And then just some regular information about what eye banking and colonial donation is.
Kevin probably mentioned you have the EBA website which is for store site.org. Please go to that they have a lot of information to help everyone whether it's in your area or across the country you can get information for everyone. Thank you Billy. Absolutely.
Thank you. We've reached the family support segment here on the gifted life and we are talking about self talk. Sally was talking to us about how self talk and the power of positive thinking can impact you even during difficult times. That's true.
You know positive thinking and the use of humor can really help one overcome very difficult hardships because there's many times as you just mentioned with grieving that people are seeing and thinking sometimes on a very negative way. And a lot of that is of course with the loss of their loved one is very difficult. But you know in everyday activities you know we have so much negativity that's thrown our way that each of us certainly can use a good shot of positivity and sometimes that has to come through us our own self talk because I know that you've heard this before that you know well how do you see the glasses that have full or half empty. And that really does directly correlate with the way that your concept or one's concept of positive thinking and whether you have a negative or positive view on life.
And many times people say well you know life is really tough and what do you mean having humor or looking at it positively. Well I understand that and I know that we all go through hardships but I also know that there are times that to say something positive to yourself and have inner dialogue that means something to you is much more important and can really there are things you can be grateful for. There are things that you can be happy about in life and that doesn't mean necessarily money and material things. It's that thinking of yourself and I don't mean that in a selfish manner but thinking of yourself and being able to say you know I've really done a good job and positive thinking people do look at it that way and they usually blame negative things that have an outside of their control.
That it's only a short lived type of experience but you know people who tend to think negative and have that inner negative dialogue going on it will last forever hardships will be here for my whole life it's never going to get any better. And even though people tend to think that well it's just what I'm saying and you know everything is going to be okay. But in reality the Mayo Clinic has looked at you know different aspects of what can positive thinking do to aid in stress management and help overall health. And some of the things are that you have an increased resistance to a common cold longer lifespan less stress lower rates of depression which as we've recently heard is quite on the increase here in the States.
Also lower risk of cardiovascular disease related health increase physical well-being and better psychological health. And you know it doesn't mean that you always look at the world through rose color glasses because there are times you know you have to take a realistic approach but that doesn't mean that you can't spend that other time you know talking with yourself and avoid negative self-talk and humor the best thing for any of us is a good laugh and you can find that in all sorts of aspects of life no matter how difficult it may be at times but you know laughing can just releases endorphins it just brings your spirit up and also you can cultivate optimism but you got to keep working on it you just can't say well I think I'll just be happy for the time being you know it doesn't work that way. If you're not a natural born optimist one the first steps towards positive thinking is to focus in on your own inner monologue and that is once again like we've just been talking about what do you say to yourself and you know you start off again by finding those good things in life you know be grateful for the things that you do have not what you don't have and I think again with everything that we hear these days with lots of negativity out there in the world we all need a good laugh we all need to be kind to ourselves and treat ourselves nicely it can make all the difference in the world and then those other folks aren't quite so bad and then sometimes you can actually laugh about it. That's right it is so easy to fall into the negative vibe and the feelings of any you can pick and choose any event that's going on or internally within your own life and it's difficult sometimes when you're immersed in it sure you know to be able to find that positive but I agree with you a hundred percent to be able to find humor or to find some positive aspect of a difficult moment it's just so important to share for not only for yourself but to others around you.
Yeah that's right and you know when I hear a lot of feedback from the community after one of our events could be like marshmad dash is coming up probably run for life one of our donor family picnics it rejuvenates folks inspires them because they're around other donor families or other recipients or other folks who are waiting and they just see things differently after that I leave inspired. I really inspired so there's events coming up near you you may want to join in if you want more information about what we talked about here today info at lopa.org. At this time in the podcast we want to honor heroes and today we are talking about the Lebloo family. This is from mom and dad the story which is on our website lopa.org.
It says our daughter is perished on a tragic house fire back in 2010. The grandpa have passed away three years earlier and donated his organs and they were all so proud of the fact so the question to whether or not to donate organs was not an issue. Cameron Page and Kylie Faith were 11 year old twins. Cassie was eight years old Adriana was 19 months old.
They are our angels and we know they're so proud as we are. They were able to help other children live on through donation. To add to this story the sweet sweet faces and this amazing family photo you can see all of this lopa.org slash faces of donation and you can see the Lebloo girls and you can see other heroes as well. Please check that out at this point let's pause and say thank you to the Lebloo family for the gifts of life.
On this question and answer segment here in the gifted life what is a tissue bank and what happens to tissue when it's recovered Joe. Well Lori you know how we talk about us as lopa being an organ tissue recovery agency. In organ donation the donation is a gift that goes straight from the donor to the recipient because it doesn't have a lot of time the organ does not have a lot of time that it can go without blood flow but the tissues on the other hand are a little bit different. We recover them as a recovery agency and we send them to the tissue bank actually as we spoke to Jason Loverty who's the accreditation manager of American Association of Tissue Banks in episode 19 he kind of gave a little more detail but tissues can go some time without blood flow some tissues can go even over a year without blood flow while they're waiting there for the right home.
What happens there is they'll create different graphs whether it be a pin out of bone or screws out of bone or even sometimes they'll use a total knee and replace or a total bone for bone replacement. So we're in either case organ or tissue we're trying to find the best home for that gift and at this tissue bank they'll stay there enough time for to be kind of quarantined and in these tissue graphs to be created so that we can make sure that there's no positive serology infectious type things going on make sure that the cultures don't come out positive for certain bacteria or fungi and things and once it's determined that they have no infections and that they're safe for use for transplant then they are sent to the person that's most in need to that surgeon so that they can use it to enhance or save that person's life. Transplaining the greatest gift possible and as he said you can hear more on this topic in episode 19 of the Gifted Life but if you have another question once you've taken a different direction you can always contact us at info at lova.org. We have reached the end of yet another podcast and we have something to share with you we always try to get different perspectives on organ donation and we hear from folks from across the country that now we decided to kind of go the other way with children cute eight year old let's listen to what she knows about donation.
Hi Addy. Hi. How old are you? I'm eight years old.
You're eight years old and I hear that you like to talk organ donation. I do. Why? Because organ donation helps save lives and I want to be an organ donor when we grow up.
Yeah. Do you know somebody who received a transplant or do you know someone who was a hero? Yes ma'am. I know it's Wendy she got a lung.
A liver and a kidney. A liver and a kidney. And she's so sweet and so kind. Yeah so you help promote organ donation?
What do you do? I go to my mom with meetings so that we can teach people about organ donation and classes so that we can so that they can be organ donors when they grow up. Yeah and so if somebody wasn't sure about signing up to be an organ donor what would you tell them? You should sign up.
You help save lives. Couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you. Ah cute little Addy right?
Yes. So we just don't know all that they take in but apparently she's listening and paying attention and will possibly work for local. Well hopefully so. Yeah she's very well met.
And she sounded very positive. She's very positive. I love it. And we want to do more of that so if you have children in your area that you would like for us to talk to then know a little bit about donation because of something that happened in your family.
Let's start having those conversations. It could be at any age as you see so that was pretty cute. We also want to thank Billy. Of course.
Yeah came on today. Yeah certainly we want to thank Billy Beerus of Southern I Bank and there annual gift of sight celebration that's going to be great coming tomorrow. Yeah and we want you to get involved as well so you can call us 5046483477. Sally did you write that down?
I did. I'm here for you 5046483477. We could use part of that clip in the podcast so get involved. Also you want us to talk about something or tackle a topic info at lopa.org.
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to all of our partners. I love when everybody comes together to work towards one goal and that is making life happen. So go out today do something you don't normally do to help save lives.
Have a good one.