Kayla 00:00:00  I would like to read something that was written by a sister of a donor hero of ours. And this states: The gift you give will bless a teenager, an adult, a senior. You will give them the gift to dance in the rain, to let the sun wash over their face. To love life like they never have before. The gift you give will grant them the second chance that you had to kiss their child’s cheek, to hold their hand, to hug their mama tight and to console their dad. The love you give will grow flowers in their gardens. Paint their homes with color. When the sun disappears into a great orange light. They will remember you and the gift you gave. When the flocks of birds fly above. Your family will look to the sky and imagine that you are among them. Perhaps you will grow wings to dance with the stars. We will all forever see you as the gift that you are. Thank you, Nicole, for your absolute selflessness getting nothing in return.

Kayla 00:00:56  We put our heads together to sing you this song. Our hands will hold on to your decorated arms. As you go into the light and unfold your wings. We cry and we cry. But think of all the souls you will save. And it’s all because of the gift you gave. Rest in peace, Nicole Marie.

Katy Ripp 00:01:18  Hey there, fellow rebels, welcome to #ActuallyICan, the podcast where we say a hearty hell yes to designing life on our own terms. I’m Katy Ripp, a lifestyle coach, business mentor, and serial entrepreneur here to guide you through the wild ride, defying what society expects of us and embracing our authenticity. On this show, we dive deep into taboo topics like death, money, spirituality, entrepreneurship, unapologetic self-care, and personal development, all while swearing and laughing along the way. Expect down and dirty conversations, plenty of humor, and a whole lot of exploration, leaving you feeling empowered to be your truest self. Whether you’re craving a good laugh, seeking unconventional self-care tips, or simply looking for some camaraderie.

Katy Ripp 00:02:04  You’ve come to the right place. We only get this one short life, so buckle up and let’s design yours on our own terms. Ready to dive in? Let’s go. Thank you guys so much for doing this. For me, the intention of it is to talk about quote unquote taboo topics. My intention was like death and money because nobody likes to talk about it. I’m guessing the three of you know that very well. So I lost my father in law when he was really young. He was only 59. He had an open heart surgery, came out of it with flying colors. They pulled the breathing tube, dislodged a clot, and he was gone now, not gone right away. We waited. You know, they tried to save him for 2 or 3 days, but obviously he passed away. Extremely Catholic family. I don’t know if they donated his organs, but I’m guessing they didn’t. And Abbey and I talked. My intention for this podcast is not to persuade anyone to do it.

Katy Ripp 00:03:07  It’s more of just like information. Let’s talk about it. Let’s dispel some myths around this. I think I know everything, by the way, that you’re not. And I’m very you know, I know I don’t know everything. However, I think I do sometimes. And then I read some of these myths that Abbey sent over to me, and I’m like, oh my God, like, people believe these things. And I didn’t know some of them. So I’m really, really looking forward to having a conversation, just really in a way of what brought you to the jobs that you have, which I feel like there are jobs and then there are callings that we happen to get paid for. And I don’t think that people that work in The death industry. I don’t know if it’s called a politically correct name. I had Alana from good Morning on not too long ago, and we were talking about death cafes and funerals and funeral homes that are no longer called funeral homes. And, you know, that kind of thing that it’s hard to talk about this because you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, and you don’t want to offend any certain population.

Katy Ripp 00:04:18  But the reality is, is we are all born and we are all going to die. There is like no way around that. So first and foremost, thank you so much for our listeners. There are three of my friends sitting here. I’m going to let them introduce themselves, but they all work and give back, I guess I would say in the organ donation field. So, Abbey, would you like to start a little bit of intro? What I’m really looking for is name. How long you’ve been in the field? What attracted you to the field? Did you end up there? Did you want to go there? Just tell me a little bit about your story, about how you guys all got there. It’s sort of fascinating that you’re all local and all work in this and all have a passion for it. So really, I’d love to know any, like, bits and pieces of that.

Abbey 00:05:10  Sure. I got into nursing. I never wanted to be a nurse. I never thought I wanted to be a nurse and ended up being a nurse.

Abbey 00:05:17  And I’ve loved it. I’ve been a nurse for 18 years, and I had an aunt who she got very sick, and she needed a liver and a kidney transplant to survive. And I was probably in high school at the time, so they only gave her about 24 hours to live, and she was able to get listed, and she ended up getting transplanted. And had, I think, about five more years with us because of that gift that somebody gave to her, we knew that it was from a young man who had passed away in a car accident, I think somewhere in the Midwest, and just seeing how my whole family kind of gathered around that tragedy, you know, that he experienced and then that gift, and just working through that whole experience with my family was really moving to the point where I always kind of had a special place in my heart for transplant and donation. And then I started nursing school. I had clinicals and did a rotation at UW on the transplant unit in clinical, and I enjoyed that.

Abbey 00:06:21  I just didn’t think I was quite ready to start there as a new grad. So then I’ve been in this role for five years after doing some ICU nursing, which we, I think pretty much all have backgrounds in intensive care nursing and have been in this role for five years. And it’s a really special group of people. And people in our department are so connected to the mission. I think it just makes it such a incredible and special place to work because it’s so mission driven.

Katy Ripp 00:06:52  Amazing. And you said you’ve been in this role. What is your role?

Abbey 00:06:56  So our titles, what we do is called organ procurement coordinator. So we basically start kind of right from the beginning following cases that may not have a good outcome for the patient or for the family. And then we kind of follow them all the way through to the time of the operating room where they have the procurement, what we call it now, surgery done. And then that’s kind of where we step in our role and kind of transition the family care to other people in our department, too.

Abbey 00:07:31  But organ procurement coordinator and.

Katy Ripp 00:07:33  Are there multiple of you is like all three of you do the same job.

Abbey 00:07:36  Yep. I think we have the less than 20 people that do this for this entire part of the state of Wisconsin. So it’s not a very common thing that nurses can get into. I think a lot of people, including myself, didn’t even know that this existed until there was an opening and an opportunity. So it’s just kind of steered us in this direction to where we are today.

Katy Ripp 00:07:59  Amazing. Thank you. Kayla, you’re up next. If you would give me your story and how you got here.

Kayla 00:08:04  Yes, I’ve been a nurse for oh gosh, it’s 2024. I’ve been a nurse for 14 years. I have worked as an organ procurement coordinator for the last eight years, and prior to that I worked in ICU nursing. And I don’t, you know, a lot of people that work in our organization, they do have some sort of personal connection to whether it’s organ donation itself.

Kayla 00:08:22  They knew somebody in their family who was a donor or a transplantation, and I don’t really have that. But what has drawn me to this is the donor families and just how strong they are. And if you think about all the surgeries that take place in United States on patients, the organ donation recovery surgery is the only surgery that will take place that does not have a direct benefit to that patient. Every other surgery that takes place, there is a reason for it to happen, and it is supposed to be a direct benefit to that patient. And the recovery surgery does not. It’s the only altruistic surgery that procurement, the recovery of the gifts, is truly to help save other people’s lives. And the fact that people say yes to this, that families follow us on this journey. It just that’s what powers me to keep going. And that’s what has attracted me to this job in the first place, is just if I can have just a tiny bit of the strength and the courage that they have, then I can go to work every day and bring my best self and, you know, and try and save as many lives as possible.

Katy Ripp 00:09:23  Are there doctors on your teams?

Kayla 00:09:26  So we have medical directors. So we have three physicians who are medical directors for our organizations. They have backgrounds in transplant or in critical care medicine. But as far as the coordinators ourselves who really kind of are the our front line for organ donation for our organization. We’re all nurses.

Katy Ripp 00:09:45  Okay. Can you walk me through procurement? And this can be high level, right. Like, what are the steps? High level steps? I don’t need anything. You know, details.

Kayla 00:09:56  Do I know about, like the surgery itself or just like how does like donation happen in a nutshell. Kind of. Yeah, just a nutshell.

Katy Ripp 00:10:02  Like, okay, you know, from an accident because I would imagine, like a lot of them are accidents or traumatic.

Kayla 00:10:09  Yeah. The hospitals that we work with, we have set criteria for them to give us a call when they have a patient, whether it’s in the emergency department or the ICU who’s really sick. And most of the time when we get phone calls about these patients, I end up actually not going on to be organ donors.

Kayla 00:10:24  So only about 10% of the patients that we hear about a year go on to organ donation. Last year, we had 199 organ donors. So most of the people that we hear about, they actually a lot of times they get better. They get the treatment that they need in the hospital. They have life saving surgeries. They end up going getting better to the point where it looks looking more like they’re going to live, as opposed to that they’re going to pass away. Some people, they maybe aren’t going to survive their hospitalization, but they might have histories, or they might be too sick to be considered for organ donation. And then the ones that we think could be organ donors. We work with a staff of family support specialists that will go to the hospital when it’s the right time to meet with families, to talk to them, either about the organ donation opportunity or to tell them that their loved one has made this decision, and what the next day or a couple of days are going to look like.

Kayla 00:11:16  We do diagnostic testing on all of our donors to see if their organs are healthy enough for transplant. And once we have all the testing done, that’s when we start trying to find the good matches, the good recipients for their gifts. And we currently utilize Unos. That’s a name that a lot of people are familiar with, as you know. So they are in charge of our matching system, if you will. And we talked to transplant centers. And once we have identified the recipients who seem to be the best matches for those gifts, we will coordinate a time for that donor hero to go to the O.R. for the recovery surgery for kind of like the bigger gifts. If you’re thinking like heart, lungs, liver. A lot of times those teams, those transplant centers will come themselves to be a part of the operation, and they will go to wherever the donor is going to be having the surgery. So if we are planning to do the surgery in a small town called Wausau in Wisconsin, we can have people flying in from all over this country to be there for that surgery and then the surgery.

Kayla 00:12:15  All the gifts are moved at the same time the surgery takes place. You know, just once the teams come in, the gifts are recovered and then they will go back to their transplant centers and they will be transplanted into recipients.

Katy Ripp 00:12:26  Did you call them a donation hero?

Kayla 00:12:29  Yeah. This is what they are.

Katy Ripp 00:12:30  Oh my God, I might. I’m going to cry at least three times already. One of the questions I have. And maybe, Louise, you could answer this for me. How fast is this process? Like, I think about this and I’m like, oh my. Is this like within like hours? All of this is getting done. Like, is this like a dopamine hit every day? You know, like an adrenaline rush sometimes.

Kayla 00:12:55  There’s a couple of us here who really.

Louise 00:12:56  Like those kind of recoveries. Yeah, yeah. Me and Kayla, to be specific. Typically our process is like a 2 to 3 day process. We can do it faster if we have to. In those situations where patients are particularly unstable or in the situation of time constraints with families, sometimes they’ve got funerals planned already within a few days, and we kind of have to meet them where they’re at with that.

Louise 00:13:18  Sometimes if they’re eligible for maybe just liver or kidneys, those recoveries can go faster, too. There’s just fewer diagnostic steps we have to take in order to make sure that those organs are suitable for transplant. But our general timeline is 2 to 3 days.

Katy Ripp 00:13:31  Okay. Still fast, especially in the world of medical. Okay, Louise, tell me how you got here.

Louise 00:13:37  Sure. I have been a nurse for about ten years. I started out in oncology and hospice over to being in the neonatal ICU. And in 2022, I made the transition to this role just kind of a roundabout way. I had a friend who was also in the role at the time, and she thought it would be a good fit for me, and I was really kind of ready for a change at that point in time. And I think the thing that I’ve noticed about all the different areas that I’ve worked is that it’s a very special population, very small percentage of the population. You know, NICU births are like 1% of all births go to the NICU, like 3% of all deaths become organ donors.

Louise 00:14:16  Like, it’s just very, very specialized. And I think that’s something that, you know, you really don’t understand how special those roles are until you’re in them. And I really think that.

Katy Ripp 00:14:27  A couple of stats you guys have thrown out, one was 3% of deaths are donors. That seems extremely small. Eligible, eligible. So that seems like an extremely small amount of people. So those are the eligible ones out of a very small number of people who are actually donating, I’m guessing. Right. So we’ll get into some of those numbers also. Kayla, you had said 199 a year. Is that how many in this area have been successfully donated? Is that the number we’re talking about our organization.

Kayla 00:15:05  We have a designated area of hospitals that we work, and it’s quite a large area. It’s a good part of Wisconsin. And out of them last year we had 199, and that was a record breaking year for us.

Katy Ripp 00:15:17  Wow. Okay. I mean, is that I’m guessing that’s a win.

Kayla 00:15:21  It is. I mean, you know, that we had more transplants when.

Katy Ripp 00:15:27  People were donating. Yeah, it was more like people donating, giving gifts, more heroes, right? All of.

Kayla 00:15:32  That. Yeah. I think some people, when they say, oh, like, you know, I think that people might be a little jaded by that number like that. We shouldn’t be celebrating it, but these people are going to pass away anyways. Like we are not causing the bad things to happen, you know? But we are allowing for some good to happen in these really, really dark times. But yes, that was a big deal for us and it was a big deal for all the recipients who received life saving gifts last year.

Katy Ripp 00:15:57  Well, right. If we’re looking at it from that point of view, which I don’t want to be insensitive about this for the people that are losing people because that is extremely difficult and I’m guessing a really difficult decision to make when you have to make it.

Katy Ripp 00:16:13  It’s one of those decisions like if you have to make it and it’s not already made, you have to make it in a moment that doesn’t feel right to make that decision. So I don’t want to be insensitive to that. But on the other side of this, what a gift you are giving, I have goosebumps. You are giving somebody a new lease on life even though yours is over, right? Like that one is over. It’s been over for a little while now, right? And what a gift. And I’m guessing that the recipients feel very different about that quote unquote win than the other side. So there is two sides to this. And I know a really good customer of ours lost his daughter and they were able to procure, I’m guessing the harvest word is no longer right. So they were able to procure her heart. You know, I mean, pretty much everything. And I am going to ask you guys what everything is because there I think there’s lots of myths around that too.

Katy Ripp 00:17:15  But they were they were able to procure everything. And he got to hear her heart in somebody else’s body. And the video that that it was fascinating and it was such a like if you ask him about it, it was such a it was such a gift to him. Right? Like to know that this person went on and lived a life with her gift because he was going to lose her anyway. So I’m sure you hear stories like that all the time. I really want to get into these like top ten, 11, 12, 40 donation myths that are out there. Again, I want to make sure that anybody who’s listening knows that this interview is in no way a way to persuade somebody to do this, to make them change a decision. This is really just an informational way to tell people if they’re interested in it, how can they do it? And also some of these things that have been floating around out there that are true or not true from the actual experts, and not just what you hear on TV or what you see on air or, you know, whatever it is, I don’t know is air even on still.

Katy Ripp 00:18:34  So anything else you guys want to add before there’s also some things in here? Abbey, thank you for this list. I love this list so much. I also would love to talk about. And if you guys don’t want to talk about this, that’s totally fine. But of course you see these like walks. You know, you see them on Instagram like they take my breath away every time I see one. I want to know if that’s real, and I want to know if that is something that happens like some. Does somebody choose that to happen? Would you like this to happen? Is that something that just gets done? I just think like we all have been exposed to that now because we live in this video and image world, and it seems really heavy to me to be like putting that out there, but at the same time, like they should be honored. So I just I want to know if that’s real.

Louise 00:19:30  That’s real, that’s real.

Kayla 00:19:31  Yeah.

Katy Ripp 00:19:32  Tell me the process about that.

Katy Ripp 00:19:34  If you want to make.

Louise 00:19:35  Sure we work with the hospitals very closely, the hospitals are actually the ones who kind of facilitate that honor walk. And it is a question to the family like, is that something you want? Is that something the donor would want and kind of explore that part first? Most often I would say almost all of the time families want that for their person. Sometimes the families aren’t even at the hospital will still do them because like you said, they deserve to be honored in that way. And some of our best honor walks sometimes happen in the middle of the night or on the weekends, when you would think there is nobody around and nobody available to come and stand and pay their respects. But we’ve heard from our hospital partners that sometimes those are the biggest, best honor walks that they’ve seen. Sometimes families choose music they want to play during the honor walk. Sometimes they get extra moments to say goodbye at the elevator doors. It’s every bit as moving as you can imagine watching those videos and then some.

Katy Ripp 00:20:36  How does it get paged out? I know I’m asking. I feel like I’m asking really stupid questions, but I feel like people want to know. Like, I’m so curious and fascinated by that. And we’ve heard of, you know, when somebody loses a baby, let’s say, like they put something on the door that’s like, everybody knows and that kind of thing. Is that a, you know, is it a call over the PA? Is there a code for it? Is there how do you get people there?

Kayla 00:21:01  I think every hospital does it different. The one hospital I work with quite closely, they will send a page out, not overhead, but to all the charge nurses phones with the time. And we usually know the time that the honor walk’s going to take place while in advance. That way the nurses will start coming down like 10 to 15 minutes beforehand. Nurse it. I mean, it’s not just nurses either. I mean, it’s physicians and anyone who works in the hospital.

Kayla 00:21:24  We have our, you know, environmental services staff. They all will come down and lie in the hallways. We also let the families know the time. And then they will also a lot of times our families invite their own community in, right, their community, their church community, their friend community, their child’s school community, their own family members. And then they will also all line the hallways as well prior to the patient going to the O.R.. So that’s I think most of those use a paging system.

Katy Ripp 00:21:53  What also a gift of closure, right? I mean, not only the funeral, right. Like you get that part too, but it’s an honor walk, right? Like their hero for the oh so fascinating and amazing.

Kayla 00:22:06  And we talked to families about it too. I have the privilege of talking with them, like, immediately afterwards. And they are always just so humbled that somebody at that hospital took five minutes out of their very busy day to pay respect to their loved ones, and it means so much to them when the doors to the ICU open and they can just see a hallway fully lined with people paying their respects.

Kayla 00:22:29  It truly means a lot to them. And there are so many times I hear families say, man, my loved one were to love that. They would have thought that was just the coolest thing. What a beautiful send out.

Katy Ripp 00:22:38  So I was going to ask this at the end, but this seems like an appropriate time to ask it. When you work in a job like this, right? Like and again, I think that there are jobs we get paid for and callings we just happen to get paid for. How are you guys taking care of yourselves?

Kayla 00:22:55  Abbey and I.

Katy Ripp 00:22:55  Have a clapping on YouTube, which I don’t love.

Kayla 00:23:00  I think we I think one thing is that we ought to be better. I think that goes for anyone in healthcare these days, really. I think that healthcare in general, when you’re working on the frontlines, it’s tough. It’s a tough environment out there. You know, there’s just a lot of division, I think in our country in general, I think that just causes things to be harder.

Kayla 00:23:18  But Abbey and I have been dealing with this lately by running. We’re not runners, but we cry.

Katy Ripp 00:23:24  Runner.

Kayla 00:23:25  And we like to spend a lot of money doing races in Disney World. That’s our outlet. That’s how we’re getting through this.

Katy Ripp 00:23:31  It’s a $1,500 t shirt. Nobody is saying anything.

Louise 00:23:35  I think a lot of it, too, is we work in an office closely with others on our team, and very frequently we kind of go through those tough moments together and kind of process and digest them as we go if we can. Sometimes the moments are too busy and full of logistical things to worry about the emotional side, but every now and then, there’s a moment that catches you or a comment made by a donor family. I think what catches me the most is just the utter generosity and thoughtfulness that these families, who are going through the worst moments of their lives will just express to you in simple conversation over the phone, whether it’s like, well, I don’t want anybody to fly. If it’s bad weather or so, you can do the or six hours earlier than we thought or, you know, things like that.

Louise 00:24:20  And I’m getting goosebumps now too. But those were just like completely takes your breath away. The generosity and the thoughtfulness that they are able to display. It really just like grounds you and makes you very thankful for everything that you have and can do for yourself.

Abbey 00:24:35  And I think another thing is like, we work so close together, I don’t think any of us have ever would ever say that. We don’t get sad. We haven’t cried at work. There are tears all the time at work and it’s like accepted. It’s encouraged, you know, just checking in with each other and just making sure that it’s okay to feel those things. That’s human and that’s normal and would be.

Katy Ripp 00:25:00  Really worried if they weren’t.

Abbey 00:25:02  Right. Right.

Katy Ripp 00:25:02  Like if people were not having emotion about it, it would be worrisome.

Abbey 00:25:06  Yeah, but we’ve all cried on the phone with donor families that we’re talking to, and I think it lets them realize how heartfelt we all find that process to be to.

Katy Ripp 00:25:19  Yeah. Okay. I also would love to know what the system is doing for you guys to help you take care of yourselves.

Kayla 00:25:28  It’s exceptionally hard for us, like right now, at this moment when you ask that question, I think we would all start crying just because, you know, nursing in general doesn’t have staff. We don’t have staff. It’s a really hard job. You have to find the right person to do this. Like you said, this is not just a job where you take home a paycheck. Your heart and soul goes into this and you give a lot every day. So we’re looking to our community, like us together. I mean, if you think about every single patient we take care of is going to pass away. Every single patient we take care of passes away. So it’s hard and it’s heavy. And, you know, I think right now it’s even maybe even a little bit harder. But again, since we have such a great group of people doing this. It’s so easy to build each other up, right? It’s when if you are having an especially hard day taking care of a patient because it’s the most tragic story you’ve ever heard.

Kayla 00:26:19  And just when you think you’ve heard the worse, something else happens next week and encouraging your coworkers to go take a walk, right? Or it’s somebody from our staff knowing that we’re so busy bringing bagels and coffee, you know, tell me your Starbucks order. Let me go pick that up for you. It’s so small. Little things that make a really big difference when we’re doing this really hard work.

Louise 00:26:40  Just systematically. We have a peer support group that has just started this year. Also, as a result of some feedback we’ve had in the past. And so I think just starting to use that in our regular basis as a space to like, tell your story, maybe unload some things, but then also to receive that validation and like rebuilding yourself and your team too has been really cool to see kind of develop. We we had some folks from a local emergency room come in and kind of train us how to do that. And so that’s been a very like well developed and thought out sort of resource that we have.

Louise 00:27:20  And we do those like monthly, I think now a couple times a month to accommodate for different schedules. But that’s been really helpful.

Katy Ripp 00:27:27  To that is amazing. Although it doesn’t really still seem like enough. And also, right, like you’re in a job, we’re all in jobs, but we all have fucking kids and like animals and shit that happens on the way to work. And right, like, everybody has bad days, you happen to have bad days on top of all of your patients dying, right? Like there needs to be a special place for you guys. I think I have lots of ideas there, but we’ll keep that for a different day, okay? I would love to go over some of these top myths about donation and what organ donation is, what it is, not how we can do it, how you don’t have to do it. You know who’s helping, who’s not, how you know all of these. So I was thinking, Abbey, you sent me these amazing myths that, again, I was shocked by.

Katy Ripp 00:28:24  And I thought I would just read off a myth, and you guys can dispel it.

Kayla 00:28:29  One thing we do like to do, if you don’t mind, before we start, I would like to read something to share with everyone. So this is something that we like to do in our office before we have a meeting. Just about anything. We call it a connect to purpose. And it really does kind of remind us of why we do the work that we do. And so what I wanted to share is a moment of silence, but we call it. And anytime we have a donor hero that’s going to the Or, we ask families if they would like to write anything down about their loved one that we can say before the surgery even start, so all the surgeons are in the room. We kind of pause the beeping and everyone kind of folds her hands, bows their heads, and we read whatever the families have prepared for us to read about their loved one so that we can honor the donor hero before the surgery starts.

Kayla 00:29:18  So I would like to read something that was written by a sister of a donor hero of ours, and this donor hero went to the Or in July of this year. And this states the gift you give will bless a teenager, an adult, a senior. You will give them the gift to dance in the rain, to let the sun wash over their face. To love life like they never have before. The gift you give will grant them the second chance that you had to kiss their child’s cheek, to hold their hand, to hug their mama tight and to console their dad. The love you give will grow flowers in their gardens, paint their homes with color. When the sun disappears into a great orange light, they will remember you and the gift you gave. When the flocks of birds fly above. Your family will look to the sky and imagine that you are among them. Perhaps you will grow wings to dance with the stars. We will all forever see you as the gift that you are.

Kayla 00:30:16  Thank you, Nicole, for your absolute selflessness. Getting nothing in return. We put our heads together to sing you this song. Our hands will hold on to your decorated arms. As you go into the light and unfold your wings. We cry and we cry. But think of all the souls you will save. And it’s all because of the gift you gave. Rest in peace, Nicole Marie.

Katy Ripp 00:30:39  You read that every time.

Kayla 00:30:41  So we read something like this. Sometimes it’s too hard for families to kind of put into words their kind of less goodbyes to their loved ones. And in those cases, it will do as well. Actually, just all do a true moment of silence. Reverend, we’ll just bow their heads and not talk for, you know, a few seconds before they start the surgery. But most of the time people write something down like this.

Katy Ripp 00:31:01  Is this the poem that you read before your staff meetings?

Kayla 00:31:04  Every time we read a different one, every time. So we choose. Sometimes we will read letters that donor heroes have written to their recipients.

Kayla 00:31:12  Sometimes we read letters that recipients have written to their donor heroes. And sometimes we read a moment of silence. And we reached out to this donor family last week to ask if it would be okay for you to read this particular one. And they were so thrilled to know that we were going to honor their loved one again in this way.

Katy Ripp 00:31:29  It’s a beautiful tribute. I a moment of silence. They’re really unbelievable. Thank you for that. You know, like that’s another gift. Like this is another gift of that donor is to educate people. Now I have like tens of followers. Right. Like this is like going out to millions of people yet. But you know, if you can change one life in this way, I mean, when somebody is a donor hero. They could possibly save many lives, right? And that is actually one thing I would love to ask, you know, what does that mean when somebody donates everything? But if we educate one person here, if one other person is willing to talk about it, I feel like our jobs are done.

Katy Ripp 00:32:13  So. How about if somebody. Yeah, like that is a question of mine. What can be donated?

Abbey 00:32:21  I was just going to say to it, I don’t know if you want to add to the previous part, but I know something that donor families always mention is very touching. Is hearing their loved one’s name again said out loud because their story doesn’t end with that moment. And it continues on. And I know that we’ve heard that many times from donor families how they want this story to keep going with their name and saying it out loud. So just wanted to throw that in there too.

Katy Ripp 00:32:51  As soon as you said Nicole, that’s what got me right, because it makes it very personal. And it’s like Nicole had a name. Nicole. Nicole had a sister, obviously parent. You know, Nicole was a human being. And is that something that is said often? Did that change it all in the last like, has it been more humanized? Like, do you call the patients by their names in the procurement and or the recipient? Like, is that a like.

Abbey 00:33:24  Yeah, I think in health care, Nicole’s heart. Yeah, I think in health care in general, we’ve tried to get away from calling them by a bad number or a diagnosis and really recognizing that this is a person with a story and a history and a family and all those things, and, you know, that’s their gift that they’re giving to somebody else. So, yeah, I think I don’t know when that movement really started, but I think we do a pretty good job in our organization of doing that and recognizing the individual part of that you never.

Katy Ripp 00:33:55  Really know about. You know who wants to share what. But as soon as you said her name, I mean, that’s what got me. So I like I appreciate that they would be willing to do that, because I would imagine that there’s some story around that for some people, but I love that they included her name and wanted it set again, and that that’s pretty common. I would want my name to go on right. Like I don’t want to be a number, especially in that situation.

Katy Ripp 00:34:22  So thank you for adding that because, well, there’s something so powerful about a name anyway. I mean, even in like the most trivial ways, right? Like we say thank you, Abbey at the coffee shop. And like it’s important to people. So, you know, in death it should also be important to people. Okay. Anything else you guys want to add before I get into the myths, I don’t want to cut anybody off or not. I mean, this doesn’t have to be the last thing we talk about either, but I want to make sure you whatever we’re doing, I want you to make sure that we’re not missing anything.

Abbey 00:34:50  Yeah, we can go into the myths and, you know, you wanted to talk about like, a full donor. So for organs and that’s primarily what the three of us. The part that we work in, in the organization does the organs for donation. So we are looking at lungs. And each of those could actually be split in recipients.

Abbey 00:35:11  So that can go to two separate people.

Katy Ripp 00:35:13  Oh fascinating. Yeah. Think about that. Right.

Abbey 00:35:17  Like if.

Katy Ripp 00:35:17  None of, you know, if two of everything kind of.

Abbey 00:35:19  A few of them. Yeah, they can work, you know, independently. And sometimes people only need one, so. Wow. Okay. And we’ll find another single match for the other lung. Look at the heart and the liver, which can also be split. We see this I think most frequently with pediatric patients. Or they only need a small section. And the liver can be split and put into multiple recipients. Kidneys are two separate as well. And then we also do Pancreas and intestines for the organ donation and then for tissue. They have a pretty extensive list of what they would use for tissue. And I don’t want to speak too much because we work with them, but that’s not what we’re doing. But they will use heart valves for valve replacements, for people they will use like heart tissue. They will use bones, connective tissue.

Abbey 00:36:18  They’ll do skins. Like for skin graft. They will use corneas.

Katy Ripp 00:36:23  All about bones.

Abbey 00:36:24  Yeah. They take bones and they sometimes they’ll use like parts of it. And I remember learning about how they’ll actually use a bone to make like a screw that’s made of bone that they can then use to like, grew into somebody else that needs bones to be connected. So they’re not just taking like, a full bone. Yeah, yeah. It’s not like you get a.

Katy Ripp 00:36:44  New femur or anything, but like. Yeah, pieces. says. Like, I just had Achilles surgery and they used like an actual screw that dissolves. But yeah, possibly they could have used a screw that was somebody else’s bone.

Abbey 00:36:58  Yeah. And they do like small fragments and almost make like a concrete kind of mixture. They can do that by breaking some of the things down to pretty small amounts. And then for eye donation, they will take corneas that they can use for eye transplant with the corneas. So a lot there’s a lot of things and not everybody can do all of those.

Abbey 00:37:20  But I think what did they say 75 like a full donor. If every single thing could be given to a different recipient, could be up to 75 different lives from one donor hero. Oh my.

Katy Ripp 00:37:35  God. And that all saving lives but improving the quality of life.

Abbey 00:37:39  Yes for sure.

Katy Ripp 00:37:40  Yeah. Fascinating. I mean, we could.

Louise 00:37:43  Go on and on and on.

Katy Ripp 00:37:44  About this. Do you guys learn about how it’s done, or is that not really your. It doesn’t need to be in your wheelhouse because I would want to know all of it.

Abbey 00:37:54  Like the tissue part, tissue.

Katy Ripp 00:37:56  Donors, all of it. Like, I want to know how it’s done, right? Like, I mean, like the transplant part of it, like the procurement to the recipient. And what happens in between, like, is that something that you guys need to know, or is that like a different department?

Abbey 00:38:11  No, we do that as part of our orientation. We will go into the operating rooms and watch, you know, the full procurement surgery because we can’t really be helpful or it’s a lot easier to know what other people may be doing if we have to reach out to them so that we know what they’re doing and their role, kind of like they follow us and find out what we’re doing.

Abbey 00:38:34  So yes, that is somebody else on a different part, but we’re still the same team. And I feel like we all kind of have a good idea of what goes on, because we’ve seen a few.

Katy Ripp 00:38:43  Well, and it makes me do your job better when you know for sure at least something about it. Are there surgeons that this is all they do? So is it a procurement surgeon? Yeah. Is that like a specialty? Yep.

Abbey 00:38:56  So I don’t know exactly the pathway that they take, but they usually do their full, you know, medical school the residency. Yeah. Yep. And then they decide that that’s the pathway that they want to do.

Katy Ripp 00:39:10  small portion of surgeons I’m guessing.

Abbey 00:39:13  Yes. Yes. It’s very specialized. Yeah.

Kayla 00:39:16  And a lot of times the, the transplant centers that we work with will actually have their own transplanting. Surgeons do recoveries as well. There are a very small handful of surgeons in this country who just do recoveries. They work for organizations that kind of do contracts for doing recovery surgeries.

Kayla 00:39:34  Otherwise, a lot of times a transplant center will have. If you have two heart surgeons, one will be on for the transplanting of the gift and the other one will be on for the recovery of the gift. And we also do have staff who aren’t surgeons, who are trained in certified to do recoveries. So on our you know, as part of our organization, we have, you know, like a PA, a surgical PA by training who is trained and certified to recover abdominal organs for transplant. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be a surgeon, a transplant surgeon.

Katy Ripp 00:40:04  Okay. Who pays for it? Oh wait.

Kayla 00:40:07  That’s no that’s okay.

Katy Ripp 00:40:09  Sorry. I’m like yeah, who’s paying for this? Is this nonprofit or okay, are we ready for the myths top 11 organ donation myths. And I am going to read the myth. And one of you is going to dispel it for us. Right? Doctors won’t work as hard to save the lives of organ donors. This one sort of caught me off guard.

Katy Ripp 00:40:31  It’s the first one. And I was like, who the fuck thinks this? Like who is really out there thinking this?

Louise 00:40:38  Tell me. It’s actually very common in minority populations that carry this belief. Personally speaking, my boyfriend is African American. He came to me, we met, he had this beliefs, and I was just as blown away as you’re saying you are too. And that was the first time I was really exposed to somebody who actually saw it that way. The primary goal is always to save the life of the patient who is coming into the hospital. Organ donation does not come into the picture until end of life. Decisions are being made. Once all the efforts possible to save a patient have been exhausted. Often when we first become aware of a patient, doctors and nurses, anyone, chaplains, social work people caring for them at the hospital have no idea what their donor registry status is. Okay, unless a family has already mentioned donation and says, oh look, I have their driver’s license, they have a dot on it.

Louise 00:41:26  Very rarely do they know about it before we do. We also work very closely with care teams to avoid conversations about organ donation occurring until the very right time, which is in conjunction with those end of life conversations. And we really want to make sure that families are understanding and accepting that their person won’t survive. Before we have any discussion about donation potential, we have to keep those conversations completely separate, because often, particularly in the cases where we’re asking families for permission for donation, if you ask them too closely to the conversation they just had with the physician or the care team about their person is not going to survive. And then we just, like, swoop right in and mention organ donation. They can’t even comprehend that. And any reaction they’re going to have to those conversations is emotionally out of fear. You know, anything. And so we really have to give some time for them to kind of digest and come to a place where they’re ready to ask, okay, what comes next? And then that’s kind of our window where we can kind of come in and start having those conversations.

Katy Ripp 00:42:30  One of the things that comes up for me would be what would be the reward for doctors not to save that person, you know what I mean? Like, the myth is that they wouldn’t work as hard. But why? Like, what’s the reward for the doctor? Not working as hard?

Louise 00:42:46  I mean, without getting to, like, down a rabbit hole. I think if you’re looking at it from a minorities perspective, like there’s a lot of distrust with the American health care system for minorities in general. So donation into that. It’s just another thing that kind of falls in line where, you know, how do I know they’re going to save my mom because she’s black or brown? If they knew she was a donor and they already carry a lot of those things with them anyways. And so I think that’s where that kind of comes from. Yeah, not that there’s any reward because obviously doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists and everybody caring for patients wants them to survive. And I think, you know, if you have that baseline trust in the health care team, that’s an easy answer for you.

Louise 00:43:32  But when you lack that trust with your health care team. Everything is in question.

Katy Ripp 00:43:37  Absolutely. Thank you so much, Louise, for your answer to that. Okay. Number two, taking organs from living people, not counting for a living donation. Can somebody explain what living donation is to me?

Abbey 00:43:49  So living donation is something that recently has been gaining a little more popularity. But this is where often it’s a patient who has a family member or a friend that may need. It’s often a kidney. Sometimes it can be a part of a liver that they need. And if somebody in their family may try to or start the process to get worked up to see if they can be a donor, and that would be something that we would call a directed living donor. And that’s something that’s done with the transplant center. They get all worked up, make sure they would be a good match, and then the surgery is planned. It’s scheduled they would, you know, remove one of the kidneys or part of the liver and then do the transplant at that time.

Abbey 00:44:36  And so that would be a living donor. That’s not something that we would do anything with because that’s what the transplant center side. So we don’t really have a whole lot of experience with that because that’s just kind of a separate thing. But it is getting more popular, I think, as people are having to wait a longer time on waitlists and it’s becoming a, you know, safer surgery. People are sharing their stories that, you know, they donated to somebody that they loved and they got, you know, a life changing gift because of it. So, yeah, we wanted to just make sure that we mentioned that too. It’s not something we work with, but that is one option.

Katy Ripp 00:45:12  That’s the Sally field Julia Roberts of our time in Steel Magnolias. Right. She donated kidney to her daughter.

Abbey 00:45:19  There you go. Yep.

Katy Ripp 00:45:21  Oh, that totally ages me. Okay. This one, number three cost will be billed to the patient or their insurance. So as we were talking before, I immediately I asked, I was like, who’s paying for the surgeon and the surgeon making that kind of money? And where’s it coming from?

Kayla 00:45:41  I can’t say how much surgeons make for doing a recovery, but I can tell you that from the moment that we meet with the family of a donor hero, all costs going forward involved in that patient’s care will come directly to our organization.

Kayla 00:45:54  So from any lab tests, any imaging tests, their nursing care, overnight stays, any hospital bills, those bills will come directly to our organization. And we also encourage our families that if they see like something on a bill that seems like they should have gotten billed for that, they can reach out to us directly and we have our billing department promptly review any sort of claims from families that they think that something should have been covered. That wasn’t from the time that we knew the families, till at the time that their loved one goes down to surgery. Everything goes to our organization and our organization, we get reimbursed by the insurance for the transplant recipients. So whether they’re on Medicare or Medicaid or if they have a private insurance, the reimbursement for that transplant surgery, that reimbursement goes to our organization. And we are a nonprofit.

Katy Ripp 00:46:47  Oh, okay. So does this nonprofit take donation?

Kayla 00:46:50  Yes, we do take donations. In fact, a lot of times we get reached out to by donor families that they want to put something like in the obituary or the memorial for them to be able to send, like any funds raised to the organization that we work for.

Kayla 00:47:05  We have it’s called a greatest needs fund. That way it’s not just like pigeonholed for a certain department or, you know, for like the recovery team. We can utilize it in many ways. We usually use it to a lot of our fundraising goes to putting out a free conference every other year for the nurses and the medical staff and the state of Wisconsin, and a lot of that is funded through donations.

Katy Ripp 00:47:28  I mean, massages. Can we, like, add something for massages for you people?

Kayla 00:47:32  I think that would be great.

Katy Ripp 00:47:34  Yes. I also do like we need to talk about that. We’ll definitely put that information in the show notes. Is that okay to do. Just absolutely want to donate. There’s a place to do that. I’m assuming there’s a place to do that online and people can make that decision on their own. Yeah. The cost is always like a I’m guessing it’s a kind of a big myth, like I’m already paying for X amount and now I have to pay for this on top.

Katy Ripp 00:47:59  You know, I mean, I think it’s very like it’s good to clear that up. And if you think that and it could be just one of those things that could be easily dispelled. Nope. You don’t pay for it, right?

Kayla 00:48:10  Yeah. And I think a lot of there’s the other thing too about and we don’t really talk about this regarding kind of like costs is that people might think that we get like kickbacks or, you know, like a lot of money for the organ donation transplantation world. And I can tell you that it just covers basically the operating costs. You know, there really isn’t you know, we’re only reimbursed a certain amount, you know, like Medicare might say, like, we will give you this amount to do a hip surgery, a hip replacement surgery. It’s the same thing for organ donation and transplantation. It’s a set reimbursement that we get from the insurance or from Medicare to provide those services.

Katy Ripp 00:48:45  Yeah, my face is surprised because like also who thinks that. Right.

Katy Ripp 00:48:50  That somebody is like out there profiting from this. But whatever okay. Two kind of back together. Number four and five I am too old slash young to be a donor. Right. So like children, older people. Right. And then I am too unhealthy to be a donor, which I think is probably pretty common that people think that.

Abbey 00:49:12  Yeah, we put this one on here because I feel like we run into this a lot in conversations with our donor families as we’re talking to them, that sometimes they’re just absolutely shocked that one of these reasons would be something that for sure assumed that they would have been ruled out for donation. So they’re surprised often. So as far as age, I think one of the first times that people are exposed to discussions about donation is often at driver’s ed. So it’s something that is required in the state of Wisconsin. At driver’s education training, there’s a certain number of hours or minutes that they have to have the training done at those classes. And when they go to get their license, they’re hoping that people would have had conversations with their families about, you know, what their wishes would be in that situation.

Abbey 00:49:59  Of course, when you’re 15, you don’t really think about that necessarily. So it’s something that they’re exposed to in driver’s ed. But we take referrals and we have donors that go all the way down to like neonates, babies can donate. It has to do a lot more with size than with age. I think one of our rules is that they would have to be over about 2.5kg to be a donor. So that’s real small. Yeah, it’s very small, but also there’s not as much of a need for infant transplants. So it would be a pretty small pool of recipients that would need something that tiny. So we do go all the way down to that size for a donors. And then we go all the way up. I think just this spring, there was a story in the news about a 98 year old male who donated his liver. It’s just wild to me. Like he kept himself on the registry and he was able to donate his liver at 98 years old. Each of the organs that we look at for transplant, they age at different rates.

Abbey 00:51:04  The highest range is usually lungs, liver and kidneys that we would be looking at. Those can get we don’t really have a limit for how high up, but we would do diagnostics to show us how well those organs may function in a recipient can’t really be too old.

Katy Ripp 00:51:21  Yeah, but too unhealthy. Like lifestyle choices?

Kayla 00:51:26  Yeah, that’s something I think about a lot. You know, if you’re ever at, like, a gathering or a party and somebody asks you what to do and say, I work in organ donation and they got a cocktail in their hand and they’re laughing, saying, like, you wouldn’t want my organs.

Katy Ripp 00:51:40  But whenever all the time at all. I mean, immediately when you said it, I was like, well, you wouldn’t want my I mean, exactly what that person would have said.

Kayla 00:51:49  Yeah, exactly. I mean.

Katy Ripp 00:51:51  Mine are much healthier now. But when I was drinking, nobody wanted mine.

Kayla 00:51:55  And seeing I will tell you the same thing that I tell these people.

Kayla 00:51:59  You know, a couple of things. Thoughts come to my mind when I hear these statements. And one, like Abbey alluded to, we do pretty thorough diagnostic testing on each gift that we think can be translated to assure that it is indeed healthy enough to be transplanted. We also do serological testing on all of our donors for communicable diseases like HIV had for things like that, and even our donor heroes who maybe do have like hepatitis C or HIV, they’re actually still able to be organ donors just due to the recent advances in health care. So hepatitis C is now considered treatable. So those organs can definitely be transplanted. And due to the Hope act a few years ago, we’re now able to place HIV positive organs with HIV positive recipients. And we’ve had donors with like, you know, 20 pack year smoking histories donate their lungs because we’ve done the testing to show that they’re healthy enough. And we’ve had people who drink six plus beers a day daily drinkers, somebody who you would consider probably an alcoholic donate their liver, actually.

Kayla 00:53:02  And it’s because we do the testing to prove that that they are healthy and safe enough for transplant. And at the end of the day, it is the expert transplant surgeon who’s evaluating those gifts, who will make the decision about whether or not that’s going to work for their recipients. So that’s why I tell everyone I say, you know, especially if you’re able to talk to me at a party with a drink in your hand, you don’t look like somebody who’s dying in a hospital bed waiting for a transplant. So I really, really do.

Katy Ripp 00:53:27  I think the lesson. Yeah, the lesson there is put yourself on the list and let somebody that went to school and gets paid to make that decision decide that is a pay grade. You let them decide, right? And you might like, have the most gorgeous eyes, right? Like put yourself on the list. Don’t worry about it. They’ll figure it out after you’re gone.

Kayla 00:53:51  Yes, exactly. And I think we even hear that from people who maybe are like cancer survivors, right.

Kayla 00:53:57  That think like, oh, I, you know, I had cancer. So I, you know, it’s probably not safe for me to donate my organs, but certain cancers that are acceptable in somebody’s history, that they can still be an organ donor. And this list of criteria that that we, you know, evaluate donors on changes all the time, like Abbey was talking about, like age, like when I first started, we didn’t do donors over the age of 80, and that number is significantly higher now. And we couldn’t even consider somebody with a breast cancer history for donation. And now certain types of breast cancer are okay. So we do, you know, review everything with the doctors that work on our team to make sure that they do think it’s safe to move forward. And we would never move forward with donation if it was going to be, you know, a harm to the recipient’s well.

Katy Ripp 00:54:39  And ultimately, the person that is donating is gone. So they don’t get to make that decision anyway.

Kayla 00:54:47  Right? But we want to make sure that those people aren’t making the decision to say no. So sometimes people can, you know, you can document your donation decision to donate and to not donate, right? So we have actually talked to families before who have a loved one that has filled out a power attorney for healthcare, in which they have checked the box that says, no, I don’t want to be a donor. And the only reason why they did that is because they didn’t think that they were healthy enough to donate, and that’s a legal decision. And we stand by that patient’s legal decision. There’s no reversing that. We want people to make decisions that are that are right for them based on right information. So if they don’t want to donate, then, you know, we’re going to honor that decision. But we want to make sure it’s for the right reasons. Yeah.

Katy Ripp 00:55:26  But like you said, it probably isn’t because you’re too unhealthy and somebody’s probably not. Yeah probably not. Okay.

Katy Ripp 00:55:33  Number six, there are enough organs for those who need them.

Louise 00:55:37  This is patently false. There are 103,000 people waiting on the national transplant list, just in the United States. In 2023, 46,632 transplants were performed, which was a record year. The majority of those were kidney transplants, at about 27,000. And about 5600 people die waiting for an organ that doesn’t come on the waitlist each year in one year. So each year. Yeah. I mean, if you think about the need and the availability of these organs. There’s a huge discrepancy there. We have a lot of work to do to get people on the registry. Speaking more about the criteria that changes for donors all the time. A lot of the times we’re seeing that expand and we’re attempting on organs or donors who, you know, maybe we wouldn’t have a year or two, five years ago just because, you know, technologies have advanced we have devices, pumps that different organs can go on after recovery to sustain their viability after recovery and prior to transplant.

Louise 00:56:42  And using a lot of those new technologies allows us to expand the viability of those organs to to get them to those recipients that are waiting.

Katy Ripp 00:56:51  I’m actually surprised by that myth, too, that people believe that there’s enough, because I feel like I’ve seen enough news out there that there’s not enough. So I appreciate you coming on and saying that is false because it’s false. Number seven. Many religions forbid organ donation.

Abbey 00:57:10  That’s not true. Either. Organ donation is supported by most major religions in the world, and they see it as a final act of generosity towards others. It’s encouraged kind of as an individual decision in most religions, as a charitable act that saves or enhances life. So it’s not really something that the religion feels like it needs to make a decision about, but just kind of leaves it to the individual knowing that, you know, they would support that as a charitable act and they would, you know, support the person for doing that. We work with a lot of people from many different religions and backgrounds, and I think the key that we see is to just have very open communication as to what is important with these families.

Abbey 00:57:56  We have found, you know, a lot has to do with maybe with timing, timelines, day or night, days of the week. You know, how soon they can get to the surgery part of, you know, the process. We’ve worked with families to get, you know, religious people in to do blessings with the donor heroes. You know, if that’s something that the family really needs to happen before they can move forward, sometimes it’s something that they hold in their hand a family put something in their hand or something that they should wear into the O.R. and it’s something that we want to be very open with these families and kind of explore what we could do to support them so they don’t have any reservations about it. And I think just another thing is that we can’t ever assume that somebody will say no based off of their religious affiliation. We see that a lot. You know, a care team may call in and say, well, they’re X, Y, or Z, so they’re not going to be an organ donor.

Abbey 00:58:51  But when we sit down and talk with them often, if we can, you know, do something or not do something and be a little flexible based off of what their wishes are, they are completely okay moving forward with organ donation.

Katy Ripp 00:59:05  Right. So on top of all of your other jobs and how heavy and intense it is, you have to ask very difficult questions and have like, like be brave enough and have the courage to ask the question.

Abbey 00:59:17  Yeah, but I think it’s it’s always better to ask those hard questions rather than assuming something to.

Katy Ripp 00:59:23  Well, 100%. But it’s still hard and you’re still.

Abbey 00:59:26  It’s not easy.

Katy Ripp 00:59:27  I still deserve a massage for it.

Louise 00:59:30  Sometimes those questions feel easier than what the donor family is going through already. So it’s it almost like gives them some control over the situation when maybe they didn’t have control before, whether they, you know, they need their person to always have the light on or they need to hold an electronic candle in their hand, or there’s all kinds of things that they want or it needs to happen at this time of day or, you know, giving them back some of that control that they’ve completely lost in the situation is another way that the donor gives to their family, too.

Katy Ripp 01:00:03  In addition, I think, you know, having the conversation. I remember when Dale’s dad died, you know, we were all in the room, and he was there and they turned off the machines. And, you know, we were standing there. But then it got to a point where we were standing there for so long with no direction, that it was like somebody needed to tell us what to do. I mean, I’m guessing somebody from the care team came in and did say something to Dales mom or whatever it was. I’m not sure exactly when that happened or how it happened, but to give somebody also some direction, like give me something concrete to make a decision about because it felt very abstract after the actual event of the death. And it’s nothing like you see on TV, by the way. I mean, you guys know that, obviously, but like, we didn’t have a whole lot of direction afterwards and we were kind of looking to somebody to like, what do we do now? Where does the body go? It maybe it was just my brain, but like I was like, where does the body go? Do we follow.

Katy Ripp 01:00:58  Right. Like some kind of concrete question to answer basically. So it’s probably I mean, it could be very therapeutic for people like give me some control. So that’s a great point, Louise. Oh, well, this kind of goes in with the one before number eight. I can’t have an open casket funeral if I donate my organs also. Fascinating. Yeah.

Abbey 01:01:22  So we work with funeral homes very closely in this process. And that’s another thing that we discuss with families what their funeral arrangements may be, because on top of everything that they’re experiencing with the death of their loved one, they also are kind of moving forward with planning funeral arrangements and all this. And so we generally, I would say, know going into the O.R. what their wishes may be for like postmortem, but in during the Or case incisions that are made for the procurement surgery are closed and they do reconstruction. Surgical lines for the case are not in any areas where clothing would not cover them during an open viewing, and we’ve often see special requests to avoid tattoos per family.

Abbey 01:02:11  And that’s something that is very personal to family members. And they don’t want that to be cut into or altered in any way. So we can take those kind of requests, and then they have prosthetics for a tissue. And I if there’s going to be a full viewing that they can use in place of something that would have been removed to keep the shape. So as long as people you know are wearing clothing for their funeral viewing, it’s not something that would be shown.

Katy Ripp 01:02:37  Also fascinating and things I would not think about. If you’re getting your heart transplanted, obviously there’s going to be a incision. However, you’re probably not going to be bare chested in your casket. I mean.

Abbey 01:02:49  Generally not.

Katy Ripp 01:02:50  Somebody has.

Abbey 01:02:51  Yeah, I mean, I’m sure somebody has.

Katy Ripp 01:02:54  Channing Tatum might, but other than that, I don’t know who should or would, but I understand. Like, maybe you’re not in the right frame of mind to think that either, right? Like, oh, I’m going to have clothes on or whatever.

Katy Ripp 01:03:07  So interesting. Number nine organ donation interferes with death investigations. This is an interesting myth. Yeah.

Louise 01:03:15  When we hear about a lot actually on different cases, both from like hospital partners or sometimes medical examiners offices themselves, we work very closely with coroners and medical examiners in the state of Wisconsin to ensure that both donation and any necessary investigation can occur in tandem. And we just have developed really good relationships through a lot of outreach and education that members of our team provide to those folks in the state of Wisconsin, so that we can do what we need to do, and they can have what they need to have. And, you know, we rarely have any trouble with anything like that. Sometimes just the conversation about what can happen, what we can provide, what they need, anything like that, and just being very open with what is required for both of us to make things, things happen.

Katy Ripp 01:04:02  I would imagine there’s quite a few myths around autopsy as well, that being, you know, very hand in hand.

Katy Ripp 01:04:08  Kind of no pun intended, I guess. Number ten rich and famous people get preferential treatment when they need a transplant. And immediately when I read this, I’m like black market organs. Seen too much TV?

Kayla 01:04:23  Yeah. Yes, exactly. This is definitely one of those TV myths. Maybe. And I think also just, you know, maybe celebrities or well-known people, if they need a transplant, there’s just more media attention surrounding them. Right? I mean, if your neighbor got a kidney transplant, but you’re not going to have the news stories, you know, that could be reporting on it. But Selena Gomez got a kidney transplant because she has lupus. And a lot of people, you know, have questions about that. And like, how did that come to be? And I think that is a worry that when people are thinking about organ donation for their loved ones or for themselves, that they think, well, it doesn’t, you know, it’s just going to go to somebody who’s at the top of the list because they have, you know, a lot of money and they pay to get there.

Kayla 01:05:01  But that’s simply not true. Our system for we call it allocation, but finding the good matches, the good recipients that is run by Unos. And you know, this is federally regulated. We’re all under, you know, regulations from the government to make sure that we are performing as we should. And actually, the people who are at the top of most of these lists are the sickest people, the people at the top of the liver list. It’s usually within like a region like 250 or 500 nautical miles from where the donor is located. And truly, the people at the top of the liver list aren’t going to make it another two days. That’s how sick they are. So it’s the sickest people within a region who are at the top of most transplant lists for every organs, and the people who are at the top of the kidney list tend to be the people who are going to match with almost nobody in the country. So they’re very difficult because they’re antibodies, very difficult to find a good match and a good kidney that’s going to, you know, suit them and, you know, work for them.

Kayla 01:05:57  So that’s how we put them at the top of the list so we can try, you know, if it’s going to be a 1 in 1000 chance. You know, we want to make sure that we try our best to see if that could work for that recipient.

Katy Ripp 01:06:07  I’m guessing we could have an entire episode around you knows myths.

Kayla 01:06:13  We probably could, but we really don’t want us talking about, you know, so they’re very complex and the intricacies about that. And, you know, currently the system for, you know, organ donation, transplantation and how that works in this country is going to be revamped soon. So I don’t a lot of us don’t know what it’s going to look like in the future. I do know that it’s going to get better. I feel very confident about that. But right now we’re going to be in a transition period coming up very soon, and I think we’ll just have to wait and see what that looks like.

Katy Ripp 01:06:40  Okay, number 11, I don’t need to tell my family I want to donate.

Katy Ripp 01:06:44  It’s on my license.

Abbey 01:06:46  Yeah. This is something I don’t know why people want to keep it a secret. If they truly want to be an organ donor. You can sign up in a lot of different ways. A lot of people are caught, you know, with that question, when they go to get their driver’s license. That is one way you can find yourself up on the registry. But I think this is kind of part of what you’re getting at to with this series is choices surrounding your death. Make them known to your decision makers. This should not be something that is sprung on them. You know when they’re reading through your paperwork after you’ve passed away like this is hopefully people need to be talking about this more with their decision makers and getting them documented in a legal way. If you have wishes that you want followed after you pass away, like make sure that those are known and documented. Most power of attorney for Health Care paperwork includes a section about donation. That’s another way people can sign up to be an organ donor.

Abbey 01:07:38  So I think it’s important to have that conversation and not just have that little data on your license. While that is important, it’s not the only way.

Katy Ripp 01:07:45  Yeah, a couple of like questions around that. From my perspective. I have also heard a myth that that that doesn’t mean anything.

Abbey 01:07:54  That that gets put there on the driver’s license when they’re made. If you sign up to be on the donor registry, they are linked. So yeah.

Katy Ripp 01:08:02  What is real like, is that enough?

Abbey 01:08:05  It is real, but it’s not always the most current. If somebody goes back and removes themselves from the donor registry, they would still potentially have that ID card with a date on it. So one of the things that we do in our role is to check on the donor registry. We don’t look at driver’s license. I don’t think anybody in the hospital even looks at driver’s license.

Katy Ripp 01:08:27  I always check the registry, we.

Abbey 01:08:29  Check the registry, and then anyone that comes in from a different state, we have the ability to check the registry in any state, actually, anywhere in the world.

Abbey 01:08:37  We’ve called to various countries, even if someone is here visiting to see what their registry status as. But we also look at power of attorney for healthcare paperwork. That’s another thing that we would, you know, obtain from family or from medical records to see if they’ve made any decisions about donation.

Katy Ripp 01:08:55  I talk about, you know, values and things. And, you know, we have different values when we were 20 that we do when we’re 40. And another set of values at 60, right. Like somebody could literally put themselves on the registry, take them off the registry and then like put themselves back on the registry in theory and like either have the dot or don’t have the dot. I mean, I understand that that’s like it’s good for the first time, but it couldn’t change. And so that means also you can change your decision and you can go out and make this decision for I mean, it’s kind of like changing the batteries in your fire alarms, like every year. You should make like think about your death wishes and be like, you know, organ donation included, right? Like, do you want this? Because it might be different when you’re 30, then you are when you’re 80.

Katy Ripp 01:09:47  I mean, these things are different. I’m also very curious and hopeful that I can help somehow get people either on the registry, off the registry, whatever decision they make is the goal to I mean, 100% of people would at least visit the donation registry and make a decision one way or the other. I mean, is that the like big hairy audacious goal for the, you know, organ and tissue donation centers?

Kayla 01:10:16  I think it’s that but also telling your families. Right. Because it should never when we’re first sitting down and talking with the family about organ donation, it should really never be a surprise to your family if you want to be an organ donor. Right? And that happens a lot where people be like, wow, we never really talked about it. So it’s important if you want to donate or don’t want to donate. And there’s many ways that people can document their donation decision. We’ve already alluded to going to the DMV. When you get your license or renew your license, that’s one way we’ve talked about powertrains for health care.

Kayla 01:10:45  Another way that you can do it in the state of Wisconsin is when you get your hunting or fishing license. You can also indicate your desire to be an organ donor that way. And they actually just passed a law this year where on your taxes, since everyone has to submit taxes. If you want to donate, you know there’s a section there where you can indicate your desire to be an organ donor as well. You can also just go ahead and sign up on the registry yourself, and we can provide you with a link that that we utilize with our organization that’ll take you right to the Wisconsin registry. And on that registry they’ll say, put me on the list or remove me from the list so you can make it, you know, kind of clear your decisions. But the hard thing is that sometimes maybe somebody signs up when they fill out their taxes, right? But they didn’t at the DMV seven years ago. So you might have an instance where somebody has a driver’s license that doesn’t have a donor dot, but we can show that this year that they indicate that they wanted to be an organ donor.

Katy Ripp 01:11:35  Which brings me to my next question is I talked to my family and they’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we get to the place and the family is like, I know they wanted it. I don’t want it. Tell me what happens then.

Kayla 01:11:52  We, the people that we have that meet with families and their worst days. I mean, that’s a job that I could never have. But we have very highly trained people who meet with families on their worst days to talk about organ donation. And it’s just having a conversation, right? Tell me more about that. This is your loved ones final wish. They have indicated their decision to be an organ donor, but tell me about how this is making you feel. What’s uncomfortable? Are you uncomfortable because, you know, we just told you that they might have to be in the hospital for another two days. You know, is there something that we can do to help you? Are you uncomfortable because we need more people to come here? Are we waiting for family to come out of state? Are you worried that we’re going to have to go to the O.R. too soon?

Katy Ripp 01:12:31  Because, you know, selling one of these myths?

Kayla 01:12:33  Yes, exactly.

Kayla 01:12:34  And finding out more about that. And like Louise said, you know, when we have these conversations, we want our families to be in a place where they can make decisions. And a lot of times these conversations sometimes unfortunately, have to happen so quickly. And our families are having reactive, you know, they’re reacting to to the conversation as opposed to, you know, sitting down and making an informed decision. So really, whenever we hear that, like, wow, I know they’re on the registry, but I just can’t do it. We just have a conversation about that more and explore it more. Like you said, a lot of it’s myths.

Katy Ripp 01:13:07  Yeah. And which is also an argument for having more than one person know. Right. Like I have a sister and brother. They both know that I want to donate my organs. If my mom says no, my sister and brother are stepping in and saying this is what she wanted, stop.

Kayla 01:13:20  Yeah, and we do.

Kayla 01:13:22  Our best to advocate for the patient, you know, to because you know that family again, they’re going through unspeakable tragedy.

Kayla 01:13:30  And sometimes it’s really hard to see the next minute, the next hour that happens. And so we really try our best to advocate for that patient that’s in that bed. And if they were sitting right here next to you, what would they tell you that they wanted? And a lot of times we already know what they wanted because they have documented that decision.

Abbey 01:13:48  One thing we see is a lot of times families feel a huge sense of relief when they know that that decision was already made by the patient, and they don’t have to make that decision anymore. They just have to be there to support that process. And I think a lot of times families are just like, I’m really glad that they made this decision one way or another so I didn’t have to. And they know about the decision ahead of time.

Katy Ripp 01:14:13  Do you ask every patient or if it’s a no on the registry, you don’t even ask.

Abbey 01:14:19  If there are no on the registry. We just ask to make sure that that’s the most recent document.

Abbey 01:14:25  Like for example, if it’s like a power of attorney for healthcare, sometimes families will have a hidden one somewhere in a drawer or a closet. You know, they gotta find it, or their cousin has it in some other state. Something like that. We just want to make sure that there was no, you know, changes to their wishes. This is what we would just like to verify with those people.

Katy Ripp 01:14:46  Every patient that’s about to die or that’s on life support or like, do they all get asked? No.

Louise 01:14:55  Okay. That’s the simple answer. If we’ve ruled them out for donation, if you know the situation isn’t appropriate for that patient clinically, you know, or if they’re not intubated, we don’t get those patients. You have to be with a heartbeat on a ventilator is kind of the minimum requirement for organ donation.

Katy Ripp 01:15:15  And then you go down your protocols okay. Yeah. Okay. That’s good. I mean, I don’t know if that’s good to know for everybody. It calms my mind.

Katy Ripp 01:15:24  I don’t know why. Yeah.

Louise 01:15:25  We don’t want to talk to families about things that don’t pertain to them in those moments do It’s not going to happen.

Katy Ripp 01:15:31  It doesn’t that right. Like we don’t want to like, put this on people that it’s not going to make a difference for. Right. Exactly. I have so many more questions but I can’t I can’t I’ll have you guys here until like 10:00. I just really wanted to tell all three of you what a gift you are giving by working a job. And I’ll say it again, like there are callings out there that you just happen to get paid for. And I think, again, my one of the things that like hurts my heart about this is I really just don’t feel like there’s enough support for you and your other team members. Like, I know you have peer support and I know that, you know, there probably is things here and there, but like, not enough for really like caring for the people that are caring for other people on their worst days of their lives.

Katy Ripp 01:16:18  Would you have to do over and over again? Some people only have one worst day of their life, and you are being privy to that over and over again, which can be extremely overwhelming. And, you know, I’m sure you guys get desensitized to it, right? Like there are still ways that you feel and emote and, you know, get overwhelmed and that kind of thing. But again, you have kids spring concerts that you have to get to and soccer games and like all of the other things that us normal people like normal, like workers have to do, right? Like you’re still doing this for a paycheck. And I’m guessing that that paycheck isn’t high enough either. So is there anything that anyone listening? Is there anything I can do, we can do to support you as your team? And I know that’s a big question. You don’t have to necessarily answer me right. The second, unless you have like super great ideas, which I would definitely take. But I mean nurses in general, right? Like they all need support.

Katy Ripp 01:17:25  But I.

Katy Ripp 01:17:25  Think in.

Katy Ripp 01:17:26  This.

Katy Ripp 01:17:26  Particular.

Katy Ripp 01:17:28  Situation, like you’re dealing with death, you are dealing with tragedy and accidents and trauma. And even on a 98 year old dude that is donating his liver, it’s still a gift. You know, it’s very high, very low. Is there anything that you can think of that would support your team members?

Louise 01:17:49  I always think about like an ounce of preparation or prevention is worth a pound of cure. Right. So like I think about the things that I can control in my life, I think about what I would ask others to control in their life. Where are your helmets? Where are your seatbelts? Do your power of attorney paperwork talk to your family about what you want. Should something unthinkable happen? Like, really think about the situations that you’re putting yourself into and think about how your family would deal with that without you there to help them and just kind of like take those opportunities to, you know, be really thoughtful for your family, for yourself, that people are going to have to care for you and do your best to prepare in the best way that you can.

Louise 01:18:36  I think that’s probably the biggest ask, I would say. And then just like day to day things like, you know, if you’re in the hospital, we obviously want you to understand what you’re going through, and we want you to be the expert on your own illness, your own care. There’s ways to do that that are very helpful with good questions. There’s ways to do that, that are not so helpful. And, you know, I think everybody just wants to be treated with respect. And so, you know, you’re absolutely going to be treated with respect. You should be in every health care situation. We would just ask the same in return.

Katy Ripp 01:19:11  Yeah. One of the things you said there was just really to make your jobs easier, it would be the directive. Yes. Everybody’s nodding their head. Yes.

Kayla 01:19:21  Yes. Absolutely. Yes, yes.

Katy Ripp 01:19:23  Unmute everybody saying yes. Yes. Just if there was an ask right now it would be. Please tell two people that you either want to or you do not want to be an organ donor.

Katy Ripp 01:19:36  And go to the registry and fill out.

Kayla 01:19:38  Your power of attorney for health care paperwork. Absolutely. Because the power of attorney for health care is the only way that you can legally document your decision to not be an organ donor on the registry. You can indicate your desire to be an organ donor. You’re either registered or not registered, and just because somebody is not registered does not mean no to organ donation. That just means that the decision is going to be going to your next of kin, to your people, to your loved ones. Whereas if you have documented your decision to be, yes, that decision has already been made by you. And it’s not to me by your family. But if you truly do not want to be an organ donor, we really want to respect that at your end of life. And so the way that you can do that is by filling out your power of attorney for health care, and you can do that without going to a lawyer. it’s free of charge. You know, if you have the right people on the right place, you can fill out that paperwork and make sure that your wishes are known.

Katy Ripp 01:20:27  Where can you do that?

Kayla 01:20:28  So I usually.

Kayla 01:20:30  Start out with you go to your doctor’s office, your PCP. There’s usually going to be a social worker within that office that can give you the paperwork. And there also is usually an informational sheet on how to do it, how to fill it out, and really what you just need. The biggest thing that you need when you fill out that paperwork is you need to have two witnesses that are not related to, or are not going to be your power of attorney for health care. So you can have your neighbor on each side be your witness for that paperwork when you fill it out.

Katy Ripp 01:20:53  And that’s something you can fill out at home. You don’t need it notarized, correct.

Kayla 01:20:56  You do not need an notarize. It just seems to be filled out at home. And then the other thing is, when you have it filled out at home, don’t just stick it under the bed sheets, right? Like you have to bring it with you so you can fax it to your doctor’s office so they can upload it into your medical chart.

Kayla 01:21:09  So, you know, that can be accessed that way, make copies of it, and make sure that the people who are your agents, that they have a copy of that paperwork to on hand, that’s the easiest way to document your decisions. And it’s not just about organ donation to it. I mean, it has to do with anything at end of life, right? Like if your family removes, you know, a feeding tube from you, you know, if you have no hope of surviving really important things that where if, let’s say you’re hospitalized, your body is in a condition that you’re gonna require extra care. You need somebody to direct that extra care. And if you do not have a power of attorney for health care, your loved ones are going to have to go to court and file for legal guardianship. And that costs money, whereas it costs nothing for you to fill out this paperwork.

Katy Ripp 01:21:50  If I went to my doctor, it’s not like doctor specific, right? Like it’s just a PDF out there somewhere.

Katy Ripp 01:21:56  Like I could attach it to this podcast show notes and everybody can print it out and do that.

Louise 01:22:02  Yeah. There’s a couple different forms in the state of Wisconsin that are widely available through Wisconsin Medical College. And the other one, there’s the Wisconsin State Forum. There’s two very standard forms that are out there. Yeah. You can just Google Wisconsin Poha and you’ll find.

Katy Ripp 01:22:19  Anything else you guys want to add. Before we wrap up, I really just I cannot express my gratitude enough for you guys coming on to do this. I obviously it’s important to you, right? Like you’re not getting paid for this. You’re not getting anything extra for this, right? Like you’re just trying to make everybody’s lives better that you deal with on a regular basis. And one of the things that I’ve heard a number of times is please tell somebody and write it down as a power of attorney, right? Like those are two very simple things. We push those things off because it’s real fucking scary, right? Like, I don’t want to die in a car accident and all of my organs get, you know, like, I don’t want to be in a position that does that, except we don’t know.

Katy Ripp 01:23:03  And also, I’m guessing I’m going to say this, right, that you’re never too young to do this.

Kayla 01:23:08  That’s correct. I think 18 you have to be an adult, right, to make legal decisions. I think if we’re talking about being too young, even our, you know, donors who are under the age of 18 but maybe are on the Wisconsin registry. While they have indicated that that’s what they want to happen, their parents in those situations still have the ability to reverse that decision, to say no where. If you are over the age of 18 and you have documented your decision to be an organ donor, that’s legally binding, like that is going to happen. If you can donate, it’s going to happen. But otherwise, really, I think age 18 is when most legal things kick in. The only other things.

Katy Ripp 01:23:42  18 you can make this decision on your own, right? Like, yes, you can do this and you should do this. You should tell your parents, you should tell your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever.

Katy Ripp 01:23:52  Although we probably all know that those guys aren’t sticking around at 18. Most of them anyway.

Louise 01:23:58  But mostly not.

Katy Ripp 01:24:00  Mostly not. So maybe pick a sibling again. Anything I know I’ve said, please say anything. And then I said something. You guys go ahead if you have anything else to add.

Kayla 01:24:10  The last thing I mean, we actually all came up with like things that like what’s like one takeaway we want people to have if they’re listening to this and we’ve already touched on a lot of them, I think the last thing that we really want to talk about is hope, and how much hope that you can give to somebody, you know, like Louise alluded to, most of the people that passed away in this country are never going to be considered for organ donation. You know, people tell me like, oh, I’m an organ donor. And I think in my head, I hope you never are. Actually, I hope that you’re never in a position where we’re going to have to have those discussions about organ donation and even those people where they are passing away in a manner where we can consider them for organ donation.

Kayla 01:24:48  It doesn’t happen all the time, right? Sometimes we think that somebody’s kidneys are going to be healthy enough for transplant, and we do our work up and it turns out that they aren’t. But the fact that somebody said, yes, give so much hope to those people who are waiting, like we talked about, there are people who are dying every single day waiting for this life saving transplant. And the fact that there’s people that say yes out there and that want to try to donate and want to try to help save people that provide so much hope to those recipients who are waiting.

Katy Ripp 01:25:17  Yeah. Again, I want to thank you guys for coming on. We’re going to make sure to put as much information as we can in the show notes. I will mention the Death Cafe again. We are having on November 10th from 1 to 3 in Cross Plains, Wisconsin. So if you’re a local and you’re listening to this in the Madison area, or if you’d like to travel to come and see us, we’re going to talk about death from 1 to 3.

Katy Ripp 01:25:40  You guys will be there. And also the gals from Good Morning who are event planners for celebrations of life and living wakes we’ve talked about, which is fascinating to me as well, really part of this series and part of really the whole podcast is meant to be these subjects that are extremely hard to talk about. For some people, sometimes there’s shame around them, sometimes there’s anxiety or fear or just myths around certain things that if we can just talk about it and we can be very respectful of each other and we can understand that, you know, no matter, especially death, like none of us are getting out alive, everybody is going to die. We don’t get to choose necessarily how we do that. And if you are prepared, it can just take a it’s such a gift to the family around you. And I’ve said this a number of times, probably in, in this podcast and in other places. My father in law had no idea he was going to die, right. Like he went in for a quote unquote routine open heart surgery, right? Like he had a valve replacement, an aneurysm.

Katy Ripp 01:26:47  And that was the his heart valve. And it was just a total fluke that he passed away. Right? Like nobody knew that. Nobody planned it. But he had everything in place for his family. All the passwords, all the account numbers, the plot, the. I want this at my funeral, I want I mean, he had everything done and it was such a I have goosebumps. It was such a gift to my mother in law and to the family, because in three weeks they were done right, like they got enough death certificates and everything was just done and they just didn’t have to do it anything anymore. It was a really rough three weeks, no doubt. But some of these things, when you’re not prepared, go on for years, years. So there’s like never any closure. It’s just always, you know, it becomes a really big chore for somebody while they’re grieving. And so it was such a gift. And so the more we talk about this and the more we prepare, whether we want to have it happen or not, it’s going to happen.

Katy Ripp 01:27:51  And just talking about it, just having you guys on here just to say, yes, we are present for people’s worst days, but also possibly their best days, like somebody else’s best day They’ve been waiting for a transplant, likely. You also get to be a part of that gift and the hero and the journey that that recipient is on. You know what a gift to talk about. And to be very honest, I just haven’t really ever heard of it. Right. Like you hear these myths, but when do you get a chance to talk about it? When do you hear about it? You guys probably are in a small part of the big healthcare system. It’s such a small part. So when do you get to really share this with somebody and realize that you can make a difference for the living and make your job easier? So to all the listeners out there, if any of this resonates at all, please go to the registry, fill out your power of attorney, come to our death Cafe and send these women some baked goods and massages.

Louise 01:28:57  I mean, I was thinking the other day when we were talking about and preparing for this, it’s like, you know, there’s only about 400 ish, give or take, organ procurement coordinators in the US, and three of them happen to live in Cross Plains. Like what are the odds, really? Right. Sort of like, you know, when lightning strikes, maybe it strikes three times, but I think that’s just such a beautiful kind of similarity with the rarity of organ donation, of how rare our jobs are and how really, in the grand scheme of things, it is a blessing that nobody knows what we do.

Katy Ripp 01:29:30  Yes, absolutely.

Louise 01:29:31  We also have such a responsibility to share it with everybody who is willing to listen, because in the rare event that you do have to deal with these things, there’s a lot that goes into it that impacts the way that a grief trajectory starts and continues over time. And, you know, we have literal lives in our hands, not just the donor or their recipients, but we have the lives and the minds and the hearts of the donor families, too.

Louise 01:30:00  And what we say and how we handle them. And those very tender moments can change everything for them.

Katy Ripp 01:30:08  The recipient part of this too. Yes, you can talk about the importance of the donation, but also you might be the one that needs one. You also don’t know that you might be the receiver and someone that needs it. And I feel like what goes around comes around. If you I know I said that we were I and you guys are not. But I know that we said that we weren’t going to say we’re going to like talk you into this, but just remember that you might need one someday. That’s all. So thank you, ladies. I really, really appreciate you reaching out to me. I really appreciate you being on and taking the time and the energy to go through this. So thank you so much. I appreciate your willingness and candidness. Oh, one of the things is if someone has Ask questions. Is there ways to reach out to you guys? Do you guys have social workers that like somebody would like call up and be like, hey, I heard this.

Katy Ripp 01:31:07  I have some more questions, I’ve heard this myth or whatever. Is there somebody to contact?

Kayla 01:31:13  Yeah, one of the websites where you can document your donation decision. It also has more information about organ donation. And that website is heroic deed.com. There’s information there about organ donation. And I think there also has some information about the specific organization that we work for and probably some contact information. If somebody had any further questions. Otherwise come to the deaf cafe.

Katy Ripp 01:31:36  Come to the deaf cafe. It’s going to be fun. I’m going to have coffee and treats and maybe some ice cream. So okay. Thank you guys. I really appreciate it.

Katy Ripp 01:31:47  And that’s a wrap on today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed diving deep into the world of living authentically with me. Before you go, don’t forget to connect with me on Instagram. Shoot me a message at Katy Ripp. I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode and connect with you further. And remember, if you want more details on today’s episode, or just want to explore more about designing your life unapologetically, head on over to my website at Katyripp.com.

Katy Ripp 01:32:11  There you’ll find all the juicy details and resources you need to keep the inspiration flowing. Lastly, if you’d like to join me on the show, whether it’s to tell about your experience of designing your own life, to share your expertise, or if you’d like to participate in lifestyle coaching live on air, don’t hesitate to reach out. Your story could inspire countless others on their own path to living authentically. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep living boldly designing your life. And remember #ActuallyICan.