Hello and welcome to the gifted life podcast where we have conversations about organ tissue ideonation and transplantation. You can always find us at thegiftedlife.org. I'm Roy Steele. I'm Joey Houdro.
I'm Sarah Blake Mar. Coming up on today's episode, she's back. Yes, she is. We'll be bringing back one woman who continues to inspire others through song.
And we're going to talk about how to make your home a little bit more mentally healthy. Yeah, all that and a whole lot more here on the gifted life. Hang on to your ads. Here on the gifted life podcast, we are so excited because we have a former guest who is back with a huge update, huge update.
So Lisa Bradshaw, you may remember the name, but she was on episode 134 of the gifted life and really broke down her story. It's an incredible storyteller. And she said, there's more to come. Like there's more to come.
Right. I got to keep trying. Got to keep living. Well, she's here.
Hey, Miss Lisa. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me back. I've been really excited.
Oh, we're excited. Yes, we love your artistry. We love your healing journey and you love that you were so comfortable sharing your life with us so that we can help learn as well. So you were back.
What like anything going on in your life? It's so funny. I went to the chiropractor yesterday and he said, so what's going on? What are you writing?
What are you doing? And I said, you know, I really got to write in lately. And then I left. I forgot to tell him I wrote a song.
Yeah, I wrote a song. I was thinking books or something, you know. Yeah, we actually are wrapping up the second one. So we'll get more into that.
But yeah, so writing the last, the first song I've ever written was recorded back in the fall and we released it on Wesley. What would have been my late husband's 50 second birthday in November? It's been quite a ride. Oh, and it's called This Beautiful Life.
Yes, This Beautiful Life. Just a beautiful song. Let's take a listen. And if you're ever spent in a place that has your smiley brilliant mind.
You're stubbornness and yes, you're sky. A lot like you, but more light, lighter from the start. Save you a place deep in my heart. Some things are just meant to be the deepest wounds.
Like your son, you're like this beautiful life. Like God knows we try. You said be strong, you'll be alright. Just raise our son, you'll find your fears gonna buy.
I'll tell you this. We've still showed up in what you've missed. I've got my promise every day. I just love the chorus, the deepest wounds they never heal, but we move on, because that's the deal.
Come with me, your son, your wife. I know you know we carved it out this beautiful life. So not only the lyrics, but I want you to talk about that and your process of writing that with an amazing songwriter and then the video that goes with it, which just really pulls you in, just a beautiful project, like a beautiful tribute to your husband. Yes, and hopefully to the donor family and all other people who were involved in organ donation, I just wanted to share our story so that it could honor everyone involved.
I think we all work really hard for each other. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah. So tell us about the process of writing.
One day you wake up and you say, let's do a song and then what happens? Well, one day in 1992, my grandfather had recently passed away and it was the first loss in my life that felt a little too soon, even though he was 75. I mean, that's just not old when you lose somebody when you lose your grandpa. And I struggled for quite a while.
I'd moved to Houston to be with Wesley. And I just every time I thought of my grandpa, it was sad. And I was driving down the road one day and I thought of him and I smiled. I felt joy and I thought, oh, wow, okay, this is how it could feel in my life.
Like there come a time when I feel joy when I think of him and not just the sadness. So I had this thought in my head and it rhymed and it was the sad that the sad becomes a smile and I find that all the while I was learning to let you go. And so I pulled over and wrote it on an app that was in my glove compartments and it just kind of gave me hope. It made me realize I started to learn about the process of grief in that moment.
And so years go by and I remember that line and I thought this could be a song some day. I was just very new starting out. I got my first type bar when I was eight years old. I was intending to be a writer, but I was young, I was 20 years old.
And so years later, eight years later, my husband Wesley passed away and after his double-ung transplant, six weeks after his transplant. Boy, the enormity of that feeling of losing someone too soon was evident, obviously. And a few months later, I was cleaning out our car to sell it and that napkin was in the glove compartment. That was our college car.
So whoever had a hunter or son was born, he's 22 years old now. So when he was born, we got a newer nicer car and whoever had a hunter in the car got to drive the nice car. And so Wesley got stuck in the college car, our community back and forth work usually. And so I remembered that line and that napkin and I just thought, oh gosh, you know, it's going to take a lot longer and it might be more intermittent, but it could come a time when I feel more joy than sadness.
And so I held onto that and I have it to this day. And I met some folks, I traveled the country, I founded a nonprofit called The Don't Wait Project and I traveled the country and I interviewed people about their Don't Wait stories. And one of my stops, I did a Southern tour in 2019 and I met some folks in Nashville in a super long story short. I was driving somewhere in August, this past August and I thought, oh, what if one of those two helped me write this song, you know, they're talented and they're home, you know, one's anywhere in Nashville, you know, it was on the road or anything.
And so I reached out to them and my friend Wendy Moten, who I met, I was her premier nights first time performing at the Grand Aloftra when I was in Nashville. And he hit it off and I interviewed her at someplace I ran into her bar after the performance that night, I got out my phone and interviewed her. And then I didn't, she'd introduced me to her lifetime partner, David Samptos, and he's traveled with all the great scenes of a bass guitar player, super talented. And they both are.
And she said, you know, I don't write, but David does. So, you know, text him and send the line if he likes it, you know, you might hear from me, he's pretty busy, but he'll get back to you know, he texts me back in like 10 minutes and said, I like the line, let's see what you got. So that's what we did. And he was really extraordinary in just letting me come up with our family's story and putting it in a lyric form.
And he said, do you hear the song? What's the melody? And honestly, I got nothing. I can't sing.
I don't play instruments, but I got the words. And I said, well, I'm kind of relying on you for the melody. And you said, well, just you know, when you're out and about, if you hear something, he made me download this memo app on my song, I mean, on my phone and he said, if you hear it in your head, just stop what you're doing and sing it in there. And I said, well, I can't sing it.
So that's what I was dragging down the road one day. And I heard the, I'm not even going to hum it for you, people will hear it in a moment, but the opening part of the song, I heard it in my head. And so I recorded it. And then I wasn't sure where the line about my grandpa was going to come in, but I knew it needed to be an important part of the song.
And so then we got the first verse through and then, I don't know, I was driving down the road again. And I was in the road. No, next time it was in the shower. So I'd hop out and got the memo thing and recorded and had that sound for the chorus and which you read just a moment ago.
And so just, you know, it just all started coming together. It just really made sense. And then when they started putting instruments to it, I said, I just want that part with my grandpa to be really quiet. Just want that to be the part of the song that just settles down.
And then we got to give them something at the end to make sure they know I turned out all right. And the entra is okay. I'm okay. So it got really big at the end.
But they did all that. They're masters, incredible. What was so neat. I just believed in the story and helped the girl out.
So I think you're instinct to write on as we were watching it like I feel what you were just talking about. I noticed you were doing that. Right now. I know that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lisa, you know, so I was able to listen to it before you got on and it's just amazing how the story comes through, right?
And I was wondering, so you're working with these guys and I have no idea. I did play a musical instrument, but I couldn't create anything to save my life. And so how do you feel the first time you heard basically the instruments and the song come together? Well, you know, the part that is really interesting about the creating of the song is it happens in layers.
You know, we worked through the lyrics for quite a while. In fact, right before someone, the person we chose to record it, Ali Cutter, right before she was supposed to record it, I said, David, I don't like the second line, the second part of the first verse. I just, I love everything else. I just need the weekend.
And so he's like, okay, we've been bumper to Monday. And that's when I changed that second part that talks about something they're just meant to be that wasn't there before, that whole part. And it needed to be. And so everything just kind of happened in layers.
And then when Peter and David and I got on a Zoom one day and they played it for me with the instruments and just were making sure I liked everything as if I should have a say. And it was just incredible to hear it all pull together. And then, and then Ali recorded her part and she sent us a video when she was done. And she said, thank you so much for choosing me.
I lost my parents at a young age and I felt every word I sang. And I didn't know that about her. Couldn't have known that about her. So it just really, it felt like the best effort I'd ever made in my creative life.
And I've written books and I've done some things, but this was like my best effort to just, you know, how you convey, I wrote a 300-82 page book, but this song is I think three minutes and 38 seconds. And how do I tell this story and that amount of time and make every single word count? You don't get a chapter. You get a couple of lines.
And I think that they just helped me really hone on what was important in the message. So hearing it for the first time, I just felt like we really got it right. And I know we all saw the release you had partnered with Donate Life America to release this beautiful life, beautiful video, which I want to talk to you about, beautiful song. So it lives at don'tweightproject.org, don'tweightproject.org.
But talk to us about the images that match these beautifully written words that were so intentional. Well, I did a pretty big video project for my son when he graduated from high school. So I pulled in, you know, Hunter and I, I've done something every year since Wesley died and it's been 17 years ago on the 28th, February 28th since his transplant. And he died six weeks later on April 11th.
And I did, every year we would do something, some kind of video, one year, Hunter narrated, I think he was about nine years old and narrated a video that I put together that was footage of us and I let people know about our story, but also educated them about registering to be a donor. And then say five years later, six years later, Hunter, re-narrated it. So we took parts of his young voice and parts of his grown up voice and put it in. So just kind of always been trying to share a story in that way.
And so, you know, really it just became about trying to make sure that that partnership worked and that people would find out about the song and, you know, just trying to make sure it the timing and when is the right time and that song actually goodness, we made a decision that it was going to be released on his birthday and that kind of sped things up because we had to get it done in time. So it's all that put together. So I went through those videos and fortunately I had so much footage, but what started happening over the years is that I ran out of footage of Wesley that couldn't come up with new things to share. And that was really hard.
You know, no new pictures, no new video. Every year another Christmas without them. It wasn't very good about doing a Christmas picture, which is Hunter and me, you know, every year after that. So you just run out of footage, you run out of their life.
And so this to me was a way to continue to keep them with us and pull all that footage and put it to those words and tell the chronological story. And so it was important for me that it be visual and it was a little difficult. You know, I write about us, but the visual images I was, I felt it was like very private to share all of this. It was a big decision and it was a big decision to even include a grown up picture of Hunter.
I've never done that. But he's a man. He's a grown man. He made the decision, not me.
That's kind of why I've always kept him private in that way. So ultimately I think that I think that people can glean our story from the video and that was what I wanted. I wanted them to hear words, but I wanted them to see our life too. So the thing that's resonating with me the most is just your journey through loss.
And I think, you know, no two losses are the same and people don't experience them the same, but we recognize that feeling of loss and especially when it comes too early is definitely resonating. And I hear it and I'm sure there's so many people who are going to hear it through the song and find comfort that someone else feels the way they do. You have this quote that I wanted to talk about. It's, Oregon donation is like life.
It's about the trying. I know you lost your husband very shortly after he received his transplant and this really stuck with me. Tell me about your thoughts behind this trying, about life is about trying. Well, what's the quickly got ill and was hospitalized many times, eight times, I think that year and he never got out of ICU.
He never got out of bed. He was supposed to get out of the bed into a cardiac chair the morning he died. And we tried. He really, really tried.
And so when you leave no stone unturned, you know, I, there's enough that goes on with grief. I had no guilt. Had no feeling that there was one more thing we could have done. And so after he died, I mean, I'm a person that would have written a letter to the donor family right away, even though they wouldn't receive it for a year.
And years went by. I'd start the letter and then I wouldn't finish it. I'd finish it and I wouldn't send it. And I just thought, what if they feel like they wasted their loved ones donation?
And then over time, and especially as my son got older, our son got older, he's lived his whole life knowing how hard we tried. And that is that's love, that's him knowing. And that's him not feeling lost. You know, that's him feeling like he belonged to his dad and his dad belonged to him.
And so I think for me, us getting to try really helped Hunter and I especially, I would say me more than Hunter, it helped me set the pace for our healing because there's just no regrets and getting to try. I mean, that's all we get to do in life, whether it's organization or whatever, you just get a chance to try and you have to know that you did all you could. And I think that you can live with that. I think you can live with it.
You know, you did your best and I want to live with it. It's, you know, Sarah mentioned that that resonated with her and it certainly does with me as well, you know, in my role with LOPA and, you know, oftentimes, you know, our job is to facilitate the donation, right? And there's many times where families, you know, the family wants to donate and we'll do everything that we can to make it happen. And then things just don't line up, you know, for whatever reason, something happens, whatever, you know, maybe there was an issue with the organ, maybe a recipient or whatever it is and things don't line up.
But we keep those, those families with us and because their loved one was still a hero. And that's exactly the message, you know, with our staff, with the families, with every, all the family support is it's about the trying. It's about the yes, it's about, you know, it's about doing everything you can to try to save someone else's life, you know, and I see, you know, from multiple lenses on that same statement. It's really impactful, I think.
And I'm glad to see that. And I'm certainly going to, if you don't mind, I'll certainly use that at some point in the near future. Well, yeah, one of the things I think, and I think this gives me the most emotional is it's not only the donor families who are so generous to give, it's the bravery of the people who sign up for transplant. You know, I had a really hard time finding love again because I shared with my life as somebody who was willing to have his lungs removed from his body and have a stranger's put in just for a couple more years.
And you know, I don't, that's like the greatest love he's ever shown us, you know, what he was willing to do to stay and what he was willing to do to try, you know, I don't know what it was like for him to go in in those moments before surgery. I know the last thing he heard me say was, I love you. And I know that's the last thing I heard him say. You know, I know he went in there brave and hopeful.
So, you know, when I say I wrote this song for everybody, I did, I wrote it for the people who were brave enough to sign up to. So I've had some hard things in my life. I'm a cancer survivor, 25 years this year. But I don't know what it's like to do that.
You know, we just, we all have our, you know, so they say just be kind to everyone you know their life, you know, they've been through, you don't know how brave they've had to be. I'm out in the community and I love when we have projects like this one because they get people talking about donation who would not think about it, talk about it, consider it at all. So I'm just curious about feedback that you're receiving and we're in the donation world. So for us, it's like a gem.
You poured your heart into it, shared your private personal photos, totally save more lives. So since the launch, let's talk about life, let's talk about what you're seeing as wins that you opened your heart and in your life to the public. Well, I feel like I've had my life open to the public for a long time. And so every year when we've posted something about Wesley's death or transplant, I received messages from people in different forms saying I became a donor because of Wesley.
Or I am a donor, but it reminds me to remind my friends, will you remind me. And I spent a couple of weeks before the anniversary of Wesley's transplant calling every single organization in the United States of America to get them to share the post that you all shared and to share a link to the song. And I went to every link that I could see of the organizations that shared it and I responded to every comment I gave thanks to all the organizations who shared and overwhelmingly, like there was a woman who said that she had given donated a bone out to a young girl who had a stem transplant and just that I was so heartbroken when I found out that she died. But reading your story about trying, now I know at least I gave them her family that gift.
You know, there is no disappointment. And then there was another woman who had a kidney donated to her and she feels guilty because she lost that kidney, now she's on dialysis waiting for another one. And she feels like, what did she do to waste that kidney? And I messaged her and I said, you know, whoever gave you that gift, guilt doesn't belong there.
It's just, that's not an emotion. Anyone who was generous enough to give you that gift would you feel. And so just overwhelmingly, I think what it was the tri part that stuck with people, either they lost someone that got the chance to try or they were part of someone's try or they are the person still trying. And I think that that I had no idea that that's the part that would really stick out.
And because of those threads, you're having conversations with people who are close to it. And then outside of that, you're having conversations with people who say, I thought my driver's license was enough, but I went on that register me, cart the link and I registered my whole family so that we all know. And oh, I didn't think to talk to my doctor or I didn't think to tell my parents or my husband or my wife, just trying to make sure people understand that driver's license. That's great, but there are other steps to take and just make sure you take them, just cross off all, you know, cross it all off, check it off so that you, you know, you're covering the yum, think about it again and your family doesn't have to, have to wonder what you want.
So I think it's all of those things inside the donation communication, you know, with people who were part of that community and then outside of it as well. And I love it. And I love the help just here in Louisiana, that's our goal is to educate people talking about it in a positive way to share these stories, these testimonials. So definitely adding your song this beautiful life to our toolbox.
So talk to us about again, where can people find the song and what else can we be on the lookout for from Lisa Bradshaw. I gave a keynote at the AOPO conference right before everything shut down and I was there in San Diego and my whole goal of that, of that talk was to introduce all the people who affected our impacted and our story, our Wesley's story through transplant and everything that happened. And, and a lot of people came up to me and said, wow, you make me want to go to work on Monday and I, reignited why I do what I do and I want to be an Allison, the nurse that you talked about, not the guy, the other nurse David who, who wasn't very helpful. And so I thought, well, what if I compile a book of short stories of all of the different patient advocacy things I've experienced so that people could learn, you know, it's like the Bob Newhart story I told about seeing something on ER when he was a guest star and I learned from that and I realized that Wesley was taking too much of a medication and we did blood work with his doctor and we were right and I learned it on ER, you know, watching the show.
So this book is an idea I have for, for putting something together that isn't one continuous story, but it's different stories along the way that I think people could learn from and just continue to, you know, do the things I've been helping different organizations online, we've been doing zooms until the country resumes and I can, you know, visit people in person in larger groups and just trying to continue to educate people, patient advocacy right now, people can't be with their families in a room right now. How do you navigate that? How do you communicate with your family's physicians and things? So there's just a need for it and, and fortunately or unfortunately, I've had enough experience with it that I think I can be helpful.
So that's what I want to continue to do. Perfect. And next visit here on the gifted life. In the meantime, you can listen to the song.
You can learn more. Don't wait project dot word. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you all.
Here on the gifted life podcast, we take a moment for mental health. Yeah, this time we'll be talking something about a mentally healthy home. I'm curious about this one. Not attention.
Well, really what I want to talk about today is when you come home from work, when you go home, that's, it's supposed to be safe haven, right? You're supposed to be able to like disconnect or connect whatever you need to do to relax, feel safe, feel mentally healthy. You want to do that at home. But what happens when your home isn't that safe haven?
So what if you have a lot of clutter, a lot of disorganization, um, would you have a lot of home repairs? Your safe place is no longer that it's, it's stressful. So you know, we talk all the time about wanting to reduce stress in our lives so that we can be happier, healthier and more mentally healthy. So let's do that at home.
So the way we do that is we first just take inventory of our homes. What are the spots? What are the places that are full of clutter? Do you have a lot of chores you have to do in this one place in the home?
How to just start organizing really? Okay. That's the hard part. Okay.
Let's just say it. Yes. And then I'm like, yeah, I'm calm and my table needs to be nothing on it. And that's weird.
But that's how I start my day, especially during the pandemic, you know, and you gotta get on these Zoom calls or whatever. Like that has to be done. Like check list to like move forward. Yeah, I feel like I have a step ahead here because I'm selling my house.
I've been decluttering. And your little one is also little. So I got three kids and you know, it's a choice that we don't need. But it's true because I feel so much better when I get into the house and it's nice and neat.
Yeah. It's not a clutter. I've actually brought, you know, got a storage shed now. So it's much better.
Yes. When I go home and I know I have laundry to do, like it just is like another thing I have to do. So if I can stay up on it and if I can go, so really make a to-do list of all the things that you need to improve in your home so that you can reduce the stress and become more mentally healthy. Start at the top.
Like what's your priority? And also what are the things that are in your control and work with that? If it is creating a daily chore list or a weekly chore list that on these days I do these chores and you know, it's set so it doesn't stress you out. It's there.
You had it organized or maybe it's I need to repair this cabinet in my kitchen because it's driving me crazy. She's looking at you, Jeff. But weird fun fact. I love it.
I love it. I love it. I love it. It smells like the warmness when it comes out.
I know weird. I don't know. But I just love to do it. But that's one of my checklists.
Like a laundry. And that's good to do. And you have a partner. So you know, that could be good for you.
It's something that it gives him stress you might be good at. So do it with your family and your home, like with the players in your house. Like create lists that you can improve upon. So everyone in the home can contribute to making a more mentally healthy home.
So I like the idea of the checklist because what I want to do to help me de-stress and I know I hope my wife doesn't listen to this episode is hey, these are the things I want you to do so that you know, I'm having to do 80%. You know, I mean, that's just me. But and it helps. But how does the actual clutter itself?
Like how does that affect mental health? Because it's stress and stress is the number one contributor to our physical and mental well being stress can do so much to you that is negative. It can create. It's even linked to like cardiac health and our mental health.
It can create depression and anxiety. So it's all about managing our stress. And if you can fix little things in your home that make your home that safe haven or you don't feel stress, it's just going to improve your well being in your mental health. I can I can test firsthand with the stress thing because I've never had high blood pressure, never had issues and yesterday I had a headache, you know, and work has been a lot of things recently.
And so I had the worst headache. I got home, checked my blood pressure and it was high. Yeah. And it's all stress, all stress related.
Right. And then I popped the open bottle wine and then I was that. Yeah. And you know, to, you know, kind of wrap this up.
What if your home wasn't that place where you could de-stress? What if it was stressful? So that's what this all about is find your place and make it as reduce the stress as much as possible so that your home is mentally healthy and physically healthy for you. I like it.
I like it. All right. Good one Sarah. All you have to do is email us info at thegipitlife.org.
And our question and answer segment, how long does it take for someone to receive a transplant? Joey? That's a tough one only because, you know, each organ is different. Right.
So, so kidneys, you have dialysis and your time on the weight list actually starts for kidneys at the time that you started dialysis. So if you started dialysis a couple of years ago, now you put on a weight list, you get put back for two years or you get two years of credit, so to speak. And so the according to the National Kidney Foundation, the median, the average kidney weight time to get the first transplant is about three and a half years. Now the other organs are a little bit different because they don't have dialysis, right?
You know, you don't have a dialysis for a liver, in other words. And each of those, and I've mentioned it in our podcast, so they have scoring based on how sick they are. And so the sicker you are, so if you, if you unfortunately get sick quicker, you'll actually get the transplant sooner. And it's for obvious reasons based on need.
Or whether, whereas someone who may have a disease process that's kind of a slower type thing, and they can live a little bit longer with the current organ that they've got, of course, they won't be put at the top of the list. There's someone who's more urgent for that particular organ that'll get it. So it's harder to say that's more specifically based on needs. So it really depends on how sick you get, how fast you get that sick.
Yeah. And you really learn that when our volunteers are out in the community and they're sharing their stories, there's no like one answer for everyone. And we even have a volunteer who was up for transplant and had a fever and they couldn't move forward with it. So another complication that you throw in there.
And that's a lot of times we hear that, right? So, you know, if a lot of times there's just one small thing that pushes someone back and then that match doesn't come back again for them for some time. Because as we talked before, you've got a match, especially with kidneys, it's got to be a very specific match with antigens, with all the other organs. It's very specific to size, height, organ size, blood type and all that.
So there's so many things and geography, obviously, you know, if you've got someone that's a perfect match in Washington state, that's not necessarily going to work for you if you're at Ashnard Tulein here. Yeah. All right. Great question.
Thanks for the tips. Joe. Maybe you want more information, you want to do some research on your own. Lopoe.org is a good one-stop shop.
You can click on donation facts and organ donation there. And if you're not registered to be an organ tissue and I don't know, you can do that at lopoe.org as well. Maybe you have a question. Give us a call.
504-648-3477. And every episode of the gift to life, we honor a hero. Today, we honor Brenda McGraw. And we learned about Brenda from her family.
My mother's beauty and light shown through her smile and generosity. And it is a beautiful feeling that as an organ donor, she had chosen to continue to share all that she could after her death. We miss her every second of the day, but her blessed that her smile lives on in our hearts and in others. And now we pause and say thank you to Brenda for the gift of life.
And that my friends, this episode 157. Thanks for listening. And remember, you can always register as an organ, eye, and tissue donor anytime. Register me.org.
Thanks also to Lisa Bradshaw for updating us on the Don't Wait Project. And it's really, I guess, about conquering the here and out, right? Right. So nice.
I love the phrase, organ donation is like life. It's about the trying. That's so true. So if you'd like to learn more, go to Don'tWaitProject.org.
And the best place to find us, guys, is on our website, thegiftedlife.org. You can listen to any of our episodes there or anywhere you'd like to listen to your podcasts, whether that's Google, Spotify, or iHeartRiO. If you listen on Apple, go ahead and rate, review, and subscribe so that others can find us. And if you're on social media, go ahead and like our page on Facebook, The Gifted Life Podcast, and follow us on both Twitter and Instagram at Gifted LifePod.
And when we're asked, guys, go out and do something you wouldn't normally do to help us make life happen. Have a good one. This is a production of LOBA, or the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency. The Gifted Life is hosted by Lori Steele, Joey Buudrow, and Sarah Blakemore, our executive producer is Kirsten Hines, producer Ishelon Caraway.
Intern is Rebecca Rannam, and we are recorded, engineered, and mixed in our Covington, Louisiana studio by Joy Perez.