The Health Chatter team chats with Susan Mau Larson and Nichole Salaam from LifeSource about organ donation.Susan Mau Larson, the Chief Administrative Officer at LifeSource, has an extensive career advancing organ donation and supporting families. Susan positions LifeSource for continued growth and success by driving fulfillment of the long-term vision and strategic priorities ensuring effective internal and external communications, working with our state and federal officials, and leading key strategic initiatives.Nichole Salaam, the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at LifeSource, works to identify and drive strategies to eliminate systemic organizational marginalization and promote equity and inclusion practices. Nichole believes centering the work of donation through the lens of equity and inclusion will help position LifeSource as a specialized leader in the field of organ procurement to best serve all communities.Listen along as Susan and Nichole share their knowledge and outline the importance of organ donation.More about LifeSource's great work can be found at https://www.life-source.org/Join the conversation at healthchatterpodcast.comBrought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships.More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Health Chatter. Today's episode is on organ donation, which should be really, really quite interesting. Organ donation has a long history and hopefully has some very, very positive implications. So we've got two great guests with us. We'll get to them in a moment. We've got a great crew that always keeps us hopping with great research.
We have three researchers, Maddy Levine-Wolf, Aaron Collins, Deandra Howard, And also, Sheridan Nygaard. Sheridan does marketing and research for us and is actually recording today's show. So thank you to them. Matthew Campbell is our production manager that gets the shows out to you, the listening audience. So this is a crew second to none.
Also on today's show is Dr. Barry Baines, our medical advisor. Welcome, Barry. And of course, there's Clarence Jones, my co-host for the show. He and I are great colleagues, and we're really appreciating all the chats that we do with all of our great guests over, goodness, it's almost over two years now. Human Partnership is our sponsor for these shows.
They are a community health organization, does wonderful things in the community around various issues related to health. Check them out, humanpartnership.org. You can check us out. at healthchatterpodcast.com. I'm Stan Shandling, the other co-host for the show, and I thank you all for being with us today. Clarence, take it away.
Hello, everybody. This is Clarence Jones, and I am excited to talk about the show today. We're going to be talking about organ and tissue donation. And we have two wonderful guests, Ms. Susan Mao Larson. I'm just going to give a high level introduction to them because they're going to talk a lot about themselves and about their work. And I just want to quickly get to that.
Susan has both a undergrad and a master's degree from the University of Minnesota. She is the Chief Administrative Office for the organization LifeSource, which is the organization in the Upper Midwest. And then we have Ms. Nicole Salaam, who is the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at LifeSource.
And that's kind of the high-level piece that they're going to share more about themselves throughout the program. I've had the honor of working with LifeSource for more than, and I always joke about this, two centuries. I've known them in the 20th and 21st century, but they are, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best community organizations that I've worked with.
And so we are honored that we are able to talk about this very, very important topic. And so with that, Stan, I'm going to let you go ahead with the first question, because this is a topic that I think that all of our partners are really, really interested in participating in.
Thanks, Clarence. So first and foremost, either Nicole or Susan, either one of you chime in. Why don't you tell us a little bit about LifeSource to start with?
Thank you for asking. This is Susan Mallarson, and I'm just so excited to be here with you today and talk about this topic. So LifeSource is the organization that is responsible for management of organ and tissue donation in actually Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. So if you think about LifeSource, we are the people behind the donor on your driver's license.
So when somebody says yes to donation, it is our privilege to work with that individual and their family to facilitate the donation process and make sure the organs and tissues that they generously give to others are received by those in need. And we are a little bit more, we are actually based in North Minneapolis.
Like I said, we cover those three areas, but our headquarters is in North Minneapolis.
So let me ask you, do you have complementary organizations around the country, such as LifeSource in different states?
Yes, we do. That's a great question. There are 56 organ procurement organizations in the country. So the federal government designates our service area. It's important to note, we're not a government agency. Of course, like all health care, we're heavily regulated by the government. But we each cover a designated service area so that we don't compete.
We collaborate with each other closely, but we do not compete.
Sounds great. Clarence? Yeah, so Susan and Nicole, We talk a lot about, or we hear a lot about organ donation. Can you talk about what is the need for organ donation? People don't necessarily have a, many times, a real clear idea about how important this particular topic is.
Yep, thank you. You know, it's really important. There are about 3,000 people in our three states alone that are waiting for a life-saving transplant, a little bit more than 100,000 in the country. Organ transplantation is so unique in healthcare because it is the one area that doctors, surgeons, nurses need.
whomever it is, the care team cannot actually help those who are suffering from organ failure without individuals who generously say yes to donation. So the need is absolutely critical. In Minnesota, 56% of Minnesotans have registered as donors. So we're a very generous state. And we also need to really work to increase the number of people who support donation.
So tell me, you know, historically, you know, when you really go back in time, Is there like an organ that really kind of started this whole process of organ transplantation, organ donation? Historically, for me, it seems like kidney was the first out of the gate, but I might be totally wrong. So what can you tell us about that?
kind of the history that's a great question i'd love to answer that and i i don't want to take over for nicole but i um i love the history um so the first successful human organ transplant was in 1956 and that was you're exactly right kidney and even today of the hundred thousand people waiting for a transplant the majority are waiting for kidneys so it really started with kidneys and then developed the first successful human heart transplant was in 1967.
So, you know, if you really think about donation and transplantation and all the developments in science and medicine, it's a relatively short time in our human history that this has developed and become so successful.
Yeah. And where did it start? Was there a place that it started like or was it kind of in various places around the United States?
You know, that's a really good question. I think the first kidney transplant was in Pennsylvania. What I will say is both Hennepin Healthcare in Minnesota and the University of Minnesota were really pioneers in transplant. And I think the University of Minnesota actually did the first pancreas transplant ever. So they were pioneers right out of the gate. Of course, I'm a proud Gopher alum.
and proud of the work that the university has done in transplant.
Yeah, yeah. Clarence. Yeah, so Nicole, let me ask you this question. You are the Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Can you talk about how does that fit into this whole issue around organ and tissue donation?
Sure, yeah. So thanks, Clarence. So Susan had mentioned that Minnesota is a really generous state. We've, you know, got about 56% of Minnesotans are registered as organ donors on their driver's license or state ID. 60% of the almost 106,000 people on the national waiting list are from communities of color. And so when we look at
In Minnesota right now, there's about 805 people on the transplant waiting list. And so when we think about donation, in many communities of color, we see high incidences of kidney disease, people who are in need of kidney transplant. And so where we bring in the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion is understanding that while we have a really high incidence
need, there are not people that are registered as donors in those communities. And so we see that there is a significant need to really educate and inform people about the donation process, which is, as we talk about, very nuanced, very sophisticated. And then also just addressing reasons why people may not register to donate due to things like medical mistrust,
And really just hearing, you know, what people's lived experiences are kind of with the healthcare industry. So doing our work through an equity lens is really essential because we're able to work with members of diverse communities in a different nuanced way as well.
So for our listening audience, let's try to visualize a little bit the process. So let's just say I need a kidney, OK? And assuming that I'm on the list, which is another question, how does one get on a list? And who do you contact in order to get on a list was part of the process. But then all of a sudden, I'm really in need. What happened?
Yes. I will take that and walk through that on the donation side. So you're right. Two parallel tracks waiting for transplant and donation. So what happens on the donation side is that all the hospitals in our service area call LifeSource when someone has died or when there's an imminent death in their hospital.
And then we work very closely with the hospital and with the family to make donation happen. We work with the care team to do the evaluation to see are they a potential donor, which actually only a small percent of people can donate at the time of their death. Um, then we see if we're the ones who checked, did they register as a donor?
We, if not, we ask the family, do you want donation to happen? And then we manage the whole clinical process up to the surgical recovery of the organs. That includes. working with the national organization who has the database of everybody waiting for a transplant. So we will contact them and say, you know, we have this potential donor that we're caring for.
Here's their blood type, all the criteria. And they will tell us who the appropriate recipient is based on a set of criteria, geography, how sick they are, you know, obviously has to be a medical match. And then we make sure the organ is transported to that transplant center where the person's waiting.
And so let's just say that there's somebody that can donate here in Minnesota. There's somehow a link that's made on where somebody could use, let's say in this case, a kidney. Then what happens? Okay, so the kidney is taken out. And then what happens? How is it transported from A to B?
Absolutely. So again, we're in the hospital, our team working with the family, supporting the family and the care team, making sure that the organs are recovered either by the transplanting surgeon, or actually we have our own surgeon who recovers kidneys for us. And then our team make sure it's packaged carefully in ice. And, you know, this is the part you kind of see in the movies.
Now it went in a cooler and then it's either driven or flown to the transplant center. So, you know, if we are taking care of a donor, say at Regions, but the recipient is at Mayo Clinic, then we'll make sure it's driven to Rochester. If the recipient's in Chicago, for example, we'll make sure it gets on a plane and gets to them there.
Okay. And then is that considered high priority for transport?
Yes. And if like if it's a heart, it will go by charter flight. Kenny has a little bit more time to be transported. But yes, we have to make sure that they're received in the time. Actually, we had an interesting story two years ago. We had a donor in Minneapolis and the recipient in Bismarck and we had a snowstorm. And our driver got all the way to North Dakota and all the highways were blocked.
And I'm not kidding, but the North Dakota State Patrol came out and escorted them all the way to Bismarck.
Wonderful, wonderful. Great, great.
Barry? Yeah, so on this same list, we have Minnesota, North and South Dakota. I had a friend who actually was a recipient of a kidney transplant. He lived in New York. And Could you just tell us a little bit if you know, is it a state registry where priorities are concerned?
Because I sort of recall that the waiting list in New York was like two years and that he was sort of shopping around for other states where he might be able to get on a list that was a bit shorter. Can you just talk a little bit about how that priority piece of things work and state registries?
Absolutely. So when somebody needs a transplant, they're all in one registry through the United Network for Organ Sharing. Sometimes we think of the waiting list, but it's a database of everybody. But then when organs are allocated, geography comes into play. So if you think of a high population area like New York, there's probably more people waiting.
There may be more donors, but there are more people waiting. And so That's why some people say, you know, I might be better off waiting in Chicago, for example, because when organs are allocated, they actually go out like a target first 100 miles. And if there's no recipient, they will go 200 miles. And so geography really does matter.
Clarence? Yeah. So Susan or Nicole, someone or a family agrees to donation. Will you tell us what is the impact of that donation? What does it mean?
Yeah. Nicole, do you want to take that?
Sorry, I was having some sound issues here. My apologies. And hopefully I won't. I won't. You want me to repeat it again? Get caught off again. Yeah. Could you? Sorry about that.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Someone or a family agrees to donation. What is the impact of that donation?
Well, I would say first that the need is way higher than what is available. And so when we have people that register to donate, we know that one person, we say this all the time, particularly when we're out and educating people about the donation process, one person can save up to 75 lives. And so if we calculate that, that's a lot of lives saved once we have people who register to donate.
So there's, you know, in terms of organs that can be donated, we also know that musculoskeletal tissue can also be donated. And so it's really important when we're talking with people to inspire them to be donors for those reasons.
So let's talk about registering. Because Minnesota might be an anomaly here because we're pretty good. But how is it that across the country, is it the same way for people to register to be a donor? Is it via your driver's license? How is it? Or is it all over the place?
Yeah. Thank you for that question. That's a great question. So generally it's the same, like we said, Minnesota's high 56% of people in the country. It's probably 45, maybe every state has the opportunity to register on your driver's license or state ID.
Okay.
What I will share is we've really been working hard to find other avenues. So anyone in the country can register online. There's opportunities to just go to the, an online website and register. Minnesota was the first state in the country to add donor registration to hunting and fishing licenses. So in Minnesota, if you're going to fish, you can register.
We've worked, Nicole's worked a lot with two tribes in North Dakota, one of which was the first tribal nation to add donor registration to tribal IDs. And I will tell you in Michigan, they just added donor registration, I think to their tax forms.
Oh, interesting.
So around the country, everybody's trying to find more ways to make registration as easy as possible. But the driver's license is the most common way.
Great. Great. So there's a couple of other things that kind of come into my mind. Recently in the news, there was a transplant, a pig. I forgot which organ it was. It might have been a kidney. Maybe you guys are aware of this. In a human. And so how is it that you link with animal donations to humans? Apparently, this patient was just discharged a little. It might have been a heart transplant.
I can't recall. But how is it that LifeSource and complementary organizations around the country link with organs from animals that could be used in humans.
Yeah. Thank you. I'll take that. And then Nicole can add on. And actually, I believe a heart and a kidney have been transplanted from what we call xenotransplantation. LifeSource actually doesn't do anything directly with that. So that would be transplant centers. Okay. It is a indication of how science and medicine is continuing to advance to meet the need of transplantation and.
Ironically, maybe your medical advisor knows this better than I do my understanding is that pigs are a little closer to human. genetics than, say, primates, which is what we might typically think of. So there's a lot of development. I know the University of Minnesota has looked at some of that, although they weren't the ones who did these transplants.
So it's really exciting to see that, I think, because the need for transplant is great. And so anything we can do to help those people is important.
And porcine or pig heart valves have been used in medicine for valve replacement for you know, for a while, certainly before the technology of, you know, pretty artificial valves. Yeah.
Yeah. So Susan, I want to, and Nicole, I want to ask you this question. We have all these people that have signed up for, to be organ donors, but a lot of them don't, are not necessarily meeting the specific medical qualification to be an organ donor. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Mm-hmm. Yes, I can. When somebody dies, in order to donate their organs, they actually need to die in a hospital on a ventilator. Because the ventilator keeps the blood and oxygen perfusing, keeps the organs healthy. That is really less than 1% of people. However... If you don't die in a hospital or don't die in a ventilator, that's when the gifts of tissue and eye donation are so important.
And so somebody can restore sight, restore mobility for somebody in need. So those are really important gifts. And that's where Nicole talked about we can save up to 75 lives. That's through all those gifts of organ tissue and eye donation.
Let me do a follow up question real quick. Yeah, yeah. When we talk about organ donation, a lot of people agree to it. but only 58% or so are actually registered to do this. What are some of the reasons why people, they might agree to it, but they don't necessarily actually sign up to become an organ donor? I mean, what are the myths? What are some of the myths that you come up with?
Because I know that we need more people to do this, but there seem to be some struggles with people actually putting their name on the bottom line.
I can certainly take that one. And then if you have anything to add to that. So earlier I mentioned we often hear from communities, marginalized communities, who have limited knowledge of the donation process. So when we think about the health and wellness and healthcare in general, donation is not necessarily something that is well understood.
And so having that knowledge, having access to understanding the donation process is really, really key. I also talked about medical mistrust, which is very visceral for some folks. given experiences that they themselves have had or family members have had, thus just not trusting the process and that, as Susan mentioned, in order for someone to be a donor, people have to be ventilated.
And so the idea sometimes is that, well, if I'm a registered donor, medical personnel will not work as hard to save my life. So that's one of the myths that's out there. We also find that there are numerous cultural reasons why people don't donate. So we often hear from various cultures that we want our loved one to be whole when they pass or they transition.
And so people may be a little less, you know, a little averse to actually authorizing for their loved one to be a donor. And then I think there's just, those are primarily the reasons that we hear. I would say again, that just because donation is such a nuanced process, organ procurement organizations are the ones who manage that process.
And they'll be work with our hospitals and partner with our hospitals, DMV transplant centers. It's such a unique niche industry that is oftentimes just not very well understood. Susan, I don't know if you'd like to add anything to that.
Actually, I think that was beautifully stated, Nicole. Thank you.
So let me ask, is there like an average age for a donor? In other words, let's just say for, I'll use myself as an, let's say I'm 80 years old, which I'm not yet. But would that automatically eliminate me as a donor? Is there a particular age that, you have to be or for an organ to be in order for it to be donated?
No. So what I would say is at the time of donation, we really evaluate the health of each organ. We have seen organ donors in their nineties, you know, maybe not heart, but liver. And sadly we've also seen infants who were, were donors. And so what we like to share, is if donation is important to you and something you want to happen, make those wishes known, register, talk to your family.
And then at the time, the healthcare team will really look closely.
Yeah. Barry. Yeah. Kind of building on this with the donations, this focus is mostly on agreeing to be an organ donor. And then typically you say you have to be on a ventilator and it's an in-hospital death. Could, What is your interface with live donation? Obviously, this would have to be with a paired organ, like a kidney. You're not going to donate your heart if you only have one of them.
How does Lifeforce interface with people who are interested in being live donors?
Yeah, great question. We actually don't directly get really involved in live donations. Sometimes we work in support of our transplant centers, but it really is the transplant centers are doing it. So the University of Minnesota Mayo Clinic, if somebody wants to donate an organ to a loved one, a neighbor, or just to donate it, they would manage that whole process directly.
Great, thanks.
I will just add to that too. That's a question we oftentimes get in the communities that we are engaging with about living donation. And as Susan mentioned, we do not manage that process. That's the transplant centers that do that. But it is a way, I think, of engaging people in the conversation about donation.
If there is an opportunity that someone might have to be a living donor to a loved one or a friend, um, it's, it's a, it's, it's a good way to open the door to having, having that dialogue.
You know, um, you kind of alluded to the idea of, um, culture. Um, did you ever run into the problem? Okay. You know, a pig kidney or a pig heart, um, And there's a need for it being transplanted into a very religious person, a religious Jew, for instance. Is there any cultural issues such as that that run into organ donation?
Generally, I'm not aware of that. The cultural component often comes into play, as I mentioned earlier, if people want the body to be whole. If tissue donation comes into play too, there's maybe a little bit more concern around that. But That is not something that I'm aware of. Susan, I don't know if you've, in the 20 years you've been with LifeSource, if you've run into that at all.
I haven't. And I think, as we said, the transplant from pigs is so new. So if that develops, I suspect we'll hear more. And Nicole, as she mentioned, just the cultural aspect on the donation side, she does such a nice job really supporting our teams and working with them to support families in the hospital. That's where we see that.
Yeah, yeah.
Clarence. So how is organ donation handled around the world? I mean, we talk a little bit about what's happening here in Minnesota and the United States, but how is this perceived around the world?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can take that. That's a great question. So as you can imagine, every country in the world has different donation processes and systems, just like we all have different governments and different social systems. So the first thing I'd like to share, it's really important to note, is the United States has the highest donation rate in the world.
Or last year, we had the second highest donation rate to Spain. So it's a little bit, some years Spain is the highest, some years the United States. So we're very proud of our system and know that a lot of countries look to us to say, what do you do? The registration rate is different. The process is a little different in some countries. So the United States is what we call opt-in.
Basically, none of us are donors unless we register to be a donor or our family chooses it. So we start from no and we opt in. Some countries have an opt out. Everybody's considered a donor unless they choose not to be or at the time of their death that their family chooses for them not to be. So it's a little bit flipped.
So, you know, our research gang, like I had mentioned at the top of the show, is really second to none. And maybe our listening audience would be interested in hearing some of the statistics that you can also read on our website. But 86% of patients waiting are in need of a kidney, again, That has a long history.
46,000 transplants plus were performed in 2023, which I'm sure was perhaps even complicated by the COVID pandemic at the time. More than 100,000 people are waiting for life-saving organ transplants, which is an amazing amount of people. Again, we mentioned that 98, or excuse me, 95% of people are in favor of organ donations, but close to 60% are actually registered.
So there's a little bit of a disconnect there. Any other things that, you know, from a... a statistical or research background thing that either Nicole or Susan, we should be aware of?
You know, I'd add one thing and then Nicole may have some more. You mentioned the 46,000 transplants in 2023, which was really amazing. The number of transplants in the country, it just continues to grow. And I think that's what I wanted to reflect on. That's the highest. And of course, 2022 was the highest ever before that. So it's, it's pretty amazing. And
When COVID hit, we couldn't do transplants from patients who had had COVID because we didn't understand it yet. And now we can. And so that's really been helpful because, of course, I think most of us at some point or other have gotten COVID by now. So we need to be able to make transplant happen.
Yeah. Sheridan, you've got some insight there.
Yeah, unfortunately, I would say I do have a lot of insight on the process of organ donation, not as a recipient or donor myself, although I am registered as a donor on my license. And I encourage anybody that is willing and able to as well. Just check your license, see if you're registered. And next time you get it renewed, consider adding yourself if you're not. But my aunt last summer said,
became very ill. She had Graves disease and she had a thyroid problem and she's in the hospital and she ended up aspirating and her heart just kind of went out and she still had some brain activity. So they ended up getting her heart working again, but she had very, very little brain activity. And so this was over several months of, you know, back and forth about
What what does it mean to be a human being at a certain point when you've lost all capability to really exist without a ventilator and everything? And ultimately, as a family, we decided and also it was in her will, living will. So I also encourage you to make sure that, you know, you have all of your your.
eyes dotted and your t's crossed in your living will with your wishes um and we determined that it would be best to let her peacefully pass and we were approached by life source to have her be an organ donor and we she had not previously indicated on her license but she had indicated it in her living will so that made it a little bit easier but it also complicated things not having it directly on her license so again i encourage you if you support this to put this on your license um
and I the whole process it happened over a day after we took her off the ventilator and I'm sure that the the team can speak to this a little bit more but they don't actually they they had her pass naturally so they don't actually give you anything to pass and if you don't pass in a certain time frame they actually can't harvest your organs and so that's I really want to
emphasize the statistic that less than 1% of donors end up meeting the extremely specific criteria to donate their organs. It's a very, very specific criteria. However, even if all of your organs cannot be harvested, your eye tissue and other tissues can still be harvested. So this is still going to help so many people with the gift of eyesight, the gift of tissue can help
countless people, but really the organs are very difficult to procure from my understanding. And throughout the entire process, LifeSource made us feel so much more comfortable. They answered our questions every step of the way. They were next to her bed with us when we were saying goodbye. They gave her, I think, what they call a hero walk as they took her off.
I'm going to start tearing up as they took off the ventilator. All of the health care workers came into the hallway and just clapped as they took her to go harvest her organs. And it was really, really special, you guys. Oh my gosh, it was really, really special. They gave us a heartbeat in a bottle. And so now I still have her heartbeat in a bottle on my shelf.
I don't think that we would have been able to comfortably go through the process without LifeSource really holding our hands every step of the way. My tears were all over the consent forms. And the lovely lady really just held my hand and gave me boxes of tissues and
It was very difficult, and without the support and love and kindness of the transplant team, we would not have been able to handle it. And I really feel that she was honored. This happened at HCMC, and there is a flag that they raise for people that donate their organs. And they do a flag raising ceremony. And that was really, really special as well.
So the way that I felt that Teresa's life was honored, second to none, there is no possible way that you could have made that they could have made the process feel any easier. Just like everything that they did really made me feel comfortable and the rest of my family. And it's a really difficult time. Not everybody necessarily agrees with organ donation. So
Just having that support really made it leaps and bounds better. And even to this day, they get you in contact with other families that went through the process. And it's really special to hear from other families that maybe lost a kid or lost somebody else. And it's just really special to have that community. So thank you, LifeSource. Thank you all organ donation services.
It was so difficult, but you guys made it so much better.
Yeah, thanks for sharing that story. You know, I've come to realize that there's really an emotional intelligence component to this whole process. And certainly it appears as though LifeSource really helps with that. You know, one question I have, is there... Any information on the life expectancy? How many more years does a person get from a particular organ?
So in other words, based on let's just say kidneys, how long are people living with a donated kidney? Has it gotten even better? But are there statistics for that?
Yeah, that is a great question. I don't have those statistics. I don't know if Nicole does. I do know it's long. And I'll say I just saw an article, I think the longest heart transplant recipient is going on 35 years, maybe. Wow, great. Kidney recipients that have been out 40 some years. You know, for some, it's not as long, but so it It really is a life-saving gift.
Clarence, I'm thinking about Kevin Jenkins and I'm trying to remember when he got his kidney transplant. So I feel like it's 20 years ago.
I would say with that same thing too. And Kevin is really moving around talking about transplants. I know. He's a great ambassador.
All right. Well, this has been quite an amazing and enlightening show. And I hope that all of you that listen to this show, first of all, consider registering if you haven't been registered prior. And for some people, you might have even forgotten if you are registered. So you can also check that too. For many people, it's right on your license, your driver's license that you carry.
But last thoughts, Susan and Nicole.
Well, my closing thought is just my, Nicole put it in the chat, but I just want to say my just heartfelt gratitude for Sheridan and her aunt and for so beautifully sharing her story and those gifts. So thank you so much, Sheridan.
Yeah, I certainly echo that, Sharon. Your synopsis of your experience with your aunt and LifeSource is really one of the reasons why... It's so important that people understand the beauty of the work that we do and the gift that people are able to give in saving other people's lives by registering to donate, to be an organ donor.
Our donation liaisons, I just want to give them a shout out, are amazing at what they do. the number of things that they navigate with families and our hospital partners is top notch. And so I'm so happy to hear, Sheridan, that you had that experience with our team members and that your aunt was able to give the gift of life. So thank you.
Last thoughts, Barry? I think Susan and Nicole just really covered
the basis on it and you know shared and also you know that sharing is so helpful that you know it really brings a human face to the experience and and oftentimes because that that emotional feeling is what oftentimes makes this so meaningful as opposed to just a you know a check mark you know on your driver's license when you hear the actual story
And then on the back end, obviously, is, you know, her aunt did a lot to extend people's lives and improve their quality of life. And so it's just like a blessing that you can, you know, pass on to paying it forward, passing it on to others. So Susan and Nicole, thank you so much.
One of the first things I said when I started the program was that this was one of the best community organizations I've ever worked with. I think that story was just an example of how great it is to work with LifeSource and with Susan and Nicole.
So for those that are struggling, for those that are concerned, for those that are interested, this is an organization that will take care in terms of sharing with you appropriate and accurate information about the process.
Yeah. Can I also just say thank you to The organ donation team, without you guys, there wouldn't be the beauty in the pain of losing my aunt.
Knowing that somebody else out there is getting the gift of seeing a beautiful sunset or seeing their granddaughter's face or their mother's face or, you know, just some of the hardships in the world and that my aunt in her last moments could pass that on to everyone Another human being is really the most beautiful thing I could possibly think of.
So really, without you guys, that wouldn't be possible. Thank you so much for letting me share my story, too. And I just want to say also thank you to my aunt Teresa for being willing to donate.
You know, one thing that I've come to realize through your story, Sheridan, and obviously the background that both Nicole and Susan have provided here, is in your case, Sheridan, this is a story, a life-changing story that you will carry with you the rest of your life. And, you know, it's not just a, you know, easy come, easy go.
These are things that really stick with us as humans as we forge ahead. And hopefully the, you know, for people who have gone through it one way or the other, hopefully organizations like LifeSource help with coping going forward, which is an important component to all of this.
Susan and Nicole, from all of us at Health Chatter, we can't thank you enough for the insights that you have provided us today. And also, most importantly, the work that you do. So thank you for being on Health Chatter with us. For our listening audience, first of all, you can listen
to the show, but also on our website, you'll be able to actually, if you'd like to, you can read the transcript of the show if that's more to your liking. So check that out. The show will be available to everybody in about a week. Shows coming up are loneliness and stress. So stay tuned for those exciting shows. So for our listening audience, all of you, keep health chatting away.