May 6, 2025 • 12 mins
Listener Lori calls in and shares the truth behind what happens to your organs after you die and if doctors let you die if you have "organ donor" on your license.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Get your hit us together and we're going to stop
and party.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Start party.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
I'm ready to party.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
See Elvis Duran after party.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Oh here it is another after party podcast. Hi y'all,
how y'all doing?
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Hyeah?
Speaker 5 (00:20):
Hey?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Remember we had Laurie from Indianapolis on the show, and uh,
she has the best job in the world. She's a
miracle worker. Let's remind everyone what Laurie's all about. LORI
are you there?
Speaker 6 (00:34):
Hello?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Helloo? Okay, tell everyone what you do for a living,
because it's fascinating we think.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Okay, So I go in with the surgeon and I
recover organs, mostly kidneys, but I do lungs, I do liver,
I do heart and kidneys.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Wow wow, wow, okay, this is important stuff. What do
you mean?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Kandhi?
Speaker 7 (00:55):
So when you say you recover them, are you the
person that's transporting them somewhere else? Are you actually going
in there getting them out?
Speaker 4 (01:02):
I do both. I go in there, I get them
out and with the kidneys. Then I clean them, canulate them,
put them on a pump, and I take them back
to my office and I find them a home.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Oh okay, I have a question.
Speaker 7 (01:13):
I have a question.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
How long Like I heard that it has to be
like a quick process, like it has to get on
ice really quick some of these organs, Like how quick
is this process of getting it into somebody else?
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Okay, so heart, lungs, liver, they will all have a
home before we go into the r so they all
know where they are going, because those will have to
be placed within eight hours of coming out of a body.
Speaker 6 (01:41):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
The kidneys, however, we put them on a pump and
they can last up to twenty four hours, and they
do not have a home when they are retrieved because
they are so sized, specific the kidneys, so we wait
until we take those out so we can measure them,
canulate them, see how well they're pumping, and then we
(02:04):
find them a home.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Wow, never knew any of this. So this is why
it's important to always have a Yetti cooler in the garage.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
You know, I keep one in the trunk of my
car for emergencies.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
So I must assume that if you have up to
eight hours to get most of those organs moved and
in the recipient, there's obviously there's a major network of
communication going on here, right.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
It's a whole team. It's a whole team working together
because I'm in Indiana. But let's say that I have
a donor whose heart perfectly matches a recipient in Texas.
We have to be in cahoot with Texas, get them
up here in time, and then we have to wait
(02:51):
until that recipient is basically on the table and they're
ready for that heart. Don't call us and say, okay,
we're two hours out. Then we know that we can
take that heart out, get it on the cooler, get
it on the plane, and get it back to Texas.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Well, let me ask you this, if you have someone
coming in let's say from Newark Airport and it's delayed
four hours or I'm sure it doesn't work that way.
I mean, have you ever had to lose an organ
because they just didn't make it in time?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
We do not, because we have private jets.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Oh wow, scary. You should scary. You should donate a
kidney you get to a fine private jet.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Do you give the organs names, like if you take
somebody's you know, like heart out, dude, name it like
Larry the Heart or something.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
We do not, but we should.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Do that, maybe, Daniel always with the very deep, probing
scientistic questions, exactly the little stick of the time. My
name is Larry the heart Goni's full the questions. What
do you ask?
Speaker 7 (03:54):
Okay, so I have a couple. So one the patient
always flies to you and you never fly the organ
to the patient.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
No, no, we we will go wherever we are needed.
So let's say that we have a heart here. Wherever
the heart is going, that heart team will fly here,
get the heart, and then fly the heart back to
their hospital.
Speaker 7 (04:16):
Okay. And then my other question was, are people just
ready to have surgery at that moment? Like I thought before,
you had some pretty major surgeries. You're not supposed to
eat for a certain amount of time, and there are
certain things you have to prep your body for. But
if you get a heart, you get a heart, do
they just go right?
Speaker 4 (04:33):
And so if you're on the top of that heart list,
you're you already know and most of the people that
are getting the heart are already.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
In the hospital.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Okay, so they're they're already on the antibiotics and doing
all the things that they need to do.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I can't imagine what it would be like to be
sitting there and you're not in the hospital. But the
phone ring said, okay, get down here now. Yeah, okay,
go time you have your.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Whole bag packed, which is what they do for kidneys,
because kidneys can be like that because, like I said,
they don't have a home. So when they find a home,
they'll call the recipient saying, hey, we have this kidney,
would you like would you like to come in? And
they'll say yes, sure, so then they'll drive to the
hospital and get them all prepped and ready.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
This is incredible. By the way, we're talking to Laurie
who who want a contest from her? That's how she
went a contest with us brother, and now we know
one of those fascinating people on earth. This is just
a blessing. Yeah, Nate, what do you have for I.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Have so many questions for you, So okay, so okay.
The first one I have is is, uh so the family,
the recipient family and the family of the donor.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Do you connect the two of them? Do you like.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
They want to? Because they're believe it or not. Are
some recipient families who do not want to know anything
about the donor, and there are some that want to
know everything about the donor. So that is a whole
separate group from what I do. But they are our
breathment and aftercare program. They connect those people, but they
(06:07):
write letters back and forth to each other through our network,
so we don't say, hey, this is their address, this
is where they live. You write a letter, you give
it to us, We give it to them, and then
eventually if those people want to meet, they absolutely can. Wow.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Okay, that's fascinating. A second question, So you went back
to school at the age of forty because you decided
this was something important in your life that you needed
to do for you. How difficult was going back to
school at forty and what did you leave as a
career to do this.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Let me tell you how difficult was my first communications
class I had to take. They were like, Okay, we're
going to make powerpoints and we're going to do this,
and we're using Google docs and all of these things.
And I turned to the senior in high school that
was sitting beside me, and I was like, what is that?
(06:59):
I don't know what that is. I'll help you. I
had no idea what I was doing. It was a mess.
It was a mess.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I have a question, what Well, she hasn't answered the
question yet.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
Yeah, but that is such a determination that you had
to say I'm going to do this. My god, you
are such an inspiration.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I know, I love that, But what what career did
you leave? What career did you leave to do this?
Speaker 4 (07:25):
I worked for an optomologist. Okay, I was a receptionist
in an optalmologist office.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Wow, look at that. Wow, yeah amazing.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
So when my husband passed away, what inspired me to
do this was I received a letter from the lady
who received my husband's heart. And I can't tell you
how many times I read that letter to at least
two hundred times.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I read that say what did it say? Just the
headlines that really really stick out.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
It was just like, thank you so much. This was
such an unselfish thing for you to do. You went
through this horrible tragedy but still had compassion to help me.
And now I am able to be my grandchildren grow up.
I was able to watch my daughter get married. I
was able to do all of these things because of
(08:15):
your husband.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
That's incredible.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, And I was like, oh my gosh. And so
I decided right then and there that I didn't know how,
I didn't know what, I didn't know what it was
going to entail, but donation was going to be a
part of my life in some way.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I cannot imagine what it's like to have a doctor
look you in the eye and say you're at the
end of your life unless and that unless someone has
an organ to keep you alive. Now what we're gonna say.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
One of the very tragic parts of the story that
I left out was my husband and I were together
for eight years and we never talked about getting married.
We were just happy. We were dating, we were you know,
we lived together. We were just happy whatever. And on
a Tuesday, he looked at me and he said, what
are we doing this weekend? And I said, I don't
think we have any plans. And he said, let's get married.
(09:15):
And I was like what, And he said, let's get married.
So we flew to Destin. We got married on the beach,
just the two of us, and sixteen days later he
passed away.
Speaker 6 (09:26):
Oh so my god.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, so we were only married for sixteen days, but
that was definitely God telling him to take care of me. Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Your story is beyond fascinating. You have so many different
layers of storytelling and things to learn. Just scary. You
had a question for Laurie.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
Yeah, I was just wondering if there was ever a
situation where somebody was waiting for something like a liver,
for instance, and then then all of a sudden the
liver comes out of the other person and you're like, ooh, yeah,
we can't use this because maybe the person like had
a life of like you know, drinking too much or something.
Has there been an organ where you guys are like,
you got your hopes up to be able to use it,
It's like, yeah, I can't.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Absolutely absolutely. We had some lungs just a few weeks
ago that we do cat scans and bronx and all
of the testing beforehand, nothing showed up on the test,
and then we got in and there was a nodule
on the lung that turned out to be a cancerous nodule.
So for we can't use any of the organs, then
I guess, I.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Guess my liver won't work. I'm going to remove myself
from the liver list. Gandhi, what do you have for
for Laurie?
Speaker 7 (10:41):
Okay, I think it's a question that is the biggest
urban legend maybe of all time. Is it true that
if you have organ donator or donation on your license,
you're an organ donor that doctors will let you die
so that they can get your organs.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
No, this is so funny that people think that you
into the ear. They don't look at your license and
go yeah, put him over and you know I left,
he's gonna go to organ donations.
Speaker 7 (11:06):
I just wanted to debunk that one because we hear
it all the time.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
No, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
We have people texting in not even know that you
are an organ donor. You're on events and way after.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Because the rumor out there is it's a possibility. People
were texting us saying you should ask Laurie about whether
or not well. People are watching their watch while I
slowly suffocate so they could take my organs rightly through
my wallet. So this has been amazing, Larry, that is
not true speaking with you and I don't do you
guys agree? I mean, this is just amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
This is amazing on so many levels.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
We could go on and on. Thank you so much
for your time and God bless you. And if ever
you need a liver, don't don't don't come run into me.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
We're gonna take your heart, all right, See my heart
it's golden.
Speaker 7 (12:01):
You're not gonna find it. Let me tell you.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Shut up, keep a menace, right. We love you, Laurie,
thank you for listening to us, have a great.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Day, thank you, thank you. Guys.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Here the Elvis Duran after party
Get your hit us together and we're going to stop
and party.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Start party.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
I'm ready to party.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
See Elvis Duran after party.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Oh here it is another after party podcast. Hi y'all,
how y'all doing?
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Hyeah?
Speaker 5 (00:20):
Hey?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Remember we had Laurie from Indianapolis on the show, and uh,
she has the best job in the world. She's a
miracle worker. Let's remind everyone what Laurie's all about. LORI
are you there?
Speaker 6 (00:34):
Hello?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Helloo? Okay, tell everyone what you do for a living,
because it's fascinating we think.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Okay, So I go in with the surgeon and I
recover organs, mostly kidneys, but I do lungs, I do liver,
I do heart and kidneys.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Wow wow, wow, okay, this is important stuff. What do
you mean?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Kandhi?
Speaker 7 (00:55):
So when you say you recover them, are you the
person that's transporting them somewhere else? Are you actually going
in there getting them out?
Speaker 4 (01:02):
I do both. I go in there, I get them
out and with the kidneys. Then I clean them, canulate them,
put them on a pump, and I take them back
to my office and I find them a home.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Oh okay, I have a question.
Speaker 7 (01:13):
I have a question.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
How long Like I heard that it has to be
like a quick process, like it has to get on
ice really quick some of these organs, Like how quick
is this process of getting it into somebody else?
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Okay, so heart, lungs, liver, they will all have a
home before we go into the r so they all
know where they are going, because those will have to
be placed within eight hours of coming out of a body.
Speaker 6 (01:41):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
The kidneys, however, we put them on a pump and
they can last up to twenty four hours, and they
do not have a home when they are retrieved because
they are so sized, specific the kidneys, so we wait
until we take those out so we can measure them,
canulate them, see how well they're pumping, and then we
(02:04):
find them a home.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Wow, never knew any of this. So this is why
it's important to always have a Yetti cooler in the garage.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
You know, I keep one in the trunk of my
car for emergencies.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
So I must assume that if you have up to
eight hours to get most of those organs moved and
in the recipient, there's obviously there's a major network of
communication going on here, right.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
It's a whole team. It's a whole team working together
because I'm in Indiana. But let's say that I have
a donor whose heart perfectly matches a recipient in Texas.
We have to be in cahoot with Texas, get them
up here in time, and then we have to wait
(02:51):
until that recipient is basically on the table and they're
ready for that heart. Don't call us and say, okay,
we're two hours out. Then we know that we can
take that heart out, get it on the cooler, get
it on the plane, and get it back to Texas.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Well, let me ask you this, if you have someone
coming in let's say from Newark Airport and it's delayed
four hours or I'm sure it doesn't work that way.
I mean, have you ever had to lose an organ
because they just didn't make it in time?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
We do not, because we have private jets.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Oh wow, scary. You should scary. You should donate a
kidney you get to a fine private jet.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Do you give the organs names, like if you take
somebody's you know, like heart out, dude, name it like
Larry the Heart or something.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
We do not, but we should.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Do that, maybe, Daniel always with the very deep, probing
scientistic questions, exactly the little stick of the time. My
name is Larry the heart Goni's full the questions. What
do you ask?
Speaker 7 (03:54):
Okay, so I have a couple. So one the patient
always flies to you and you never fly the organ
to the patient.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
No, no, we we will go wherever we are needed.
So let's say that we have a heart here. Wherever
the heart is going, that heart team will fly here,
get the heart, and then fly the heart back to
their hospital.
Speaker 7 (04:16):
Okay. And then my other question was, are people just
ready to have surgery at that moment? Like I thought before,
you had some pretty major surgeries. You're not supposed to
eat for a certain amount of time, and there are
certain things you have to prep your body for. But
if you get a heart, you get a heart, do
they just go right?
Speaker 4 (04:33):
And so if you're on the top of that heart list,
you're you already know and most of the people that
are getting the heart are already.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
In the hospital.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Okay, so they're they're already on the antibiotics and doing
all the things that they need to do.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I can't imagine what it would be like to be
sitting there and you're not in the hospital. But the
phone ring said, okay, get down here now. Yeah, okay,
go time you have your.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Whole bag packed, which is what they do for kidneys,
because kidneys can be like that because, like I said,
they don't have a home. So when they find a home,
they'll call the recipient saying, hey, we have this kidney,
would you like would you like to come in? And
they'll say yes, sure, so then they'll drive to the
hospital and get them all prepped and ready.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
This is incredible. By the way, we're talking to Laurie
who who want a contest from her? That's how she
went a contest with us brother, and now we know
one of those fascinating people on earth. This is just
a blessing. Yeah, Nate, what do you have for I.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Have so many questions for you, So okay, so okay.
The first one I have is is, uh so the family,
the recipient family and the family of the donor.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Do you connect the two of them? Do you like.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
They want to? Because they're believe it or not. Are
some recipient families who do not want to know anything
about the donor, and there are some that want to
know everything about the donor. So that is a whole
separate group from what I do. But they are our
breathment and aftercare program. They connect those people, but they
(06:07):
write letters back and forth to each other through our network,
so we don't say, hey, this is their address, this
is where they live. You write a letter, you give
it to us, We give it to them, and then
eventually if those people want to meet, they absolutely can. Wow.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Okay, that's fascinating. A second question, So you went back
to school at the age of forty because you decided
this was something important in your life that you needed
to do for you. How difficult was going back to
school at forty and what did you leave as a
career to do this.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Let me tell you how difficult was my first communications
class I had to take. They were like, Okay, we're
going to make powerpoints and we're going to do this,
and we're using Google docs and all of these things.
And I turned to the senior in high school that
was sitting beside me, and I was like, what is that?
(06:59):
I don't know what that is. I'll help you. I
had no idea what I was doing. It was a mess.
It was a mess.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I have a question, what Well, she hasn't answered the
question yet.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
Yeah, but that is such a determination that you had
to say I'm going to do this. My god, you
are such an inspiration.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I know, I love that, But what what career did
you leave? What career did you leave to do this?
Speaker 4 (07:25):
I worked for an optomologist. Okay, I was a receptionist
in an optalmologist office.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Wow, look at that. Wow, yeah amazing.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
So when my husband passed away, what inspired me to
do this was I received a letter from the lady
who received my husband's heart. And I can't tell you
how many times I read that letter to at least
two hundred times.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I read that say what did it say? Just the
headlines that really really stick out.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
It was just like, thank you so much. This was
such an unselfish thing for you to do. You went
through this horrible tragedy but still had compassion to help me.
And now I am able to be my grandchildren grow up.
I was able to watch my daughter get married. I
was able to do all of these things because of
(08:15):
your husband.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
That's incredible.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, And I was like, oh my gosh. And so
I decided right then and there that I didn't know how,
I didn't know what, I didn't know what it was
going to entail, but donation was going to be a
part of my life in some way.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I cannot imagine what it's like to have a doctor
look you in the eye and say you're at the
end of your life unless and that unless someone has
an organ to keep you alive. Now what we're gonna say.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
One of the very tragic parts of the story that
I left out was my husband and I were together
for eight years and we never talked about getting married.
We were just happy. We were dating, we were you know,
we lived together. We were just happy whatever. And on
a Tuesday, he looked at me and he said, what
are we doing this weekend? And I said, I don't
think we have any plans. And he said, let's get married.
(09:15):
And I was like what, And he said, let's get married.
So we flew to Destin. We got married on the beach,
just the two of us, and sixteen days later he
passed away.
Speaker 6 (09:26):
Oh so my god.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, so we were only married for sixteen days, but
that was definitely God telling him to take care of me. Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Your story is beyond fascinating. You have so many different
layers of storytelling and things to learn. Just scary. You
had a question for Laurie.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
Yeah, I was just wondering if there was ever a
situation where somebody was waiting for something like a liver,
for instance, and then then all of a sudden the
liver comes out of the other person and you're like, ooh, yeah,
we can't use this because maybe the person like had
a life of like you know, drinking too much or something.
Has there been an organ where you guys are like,
you got your hopes up to be able to use it,
It's like, yeah, I can't.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Absolutely absolutely. We had some lungs just a few weeks
ago that we do cat scans and bronx and all
of the testing beforehand, nothing showed up on the test,
and then we got in and there was a nodule
on the lung that turned out to be a cancerous nodule.
So for we can't use any of the organs, then
I guess, I.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Guess my liver won't work. I'm going to remove myself
from the liver list. Gandhi, what do you have for
for Laurie?
Speaker 7 (10:41):
Okay, I think it's a question that is the biggest
urban legend maybe of all time. Is it true that
if you have organ donator or donation on your license,
you're an organ donor that doctors will let you die
so that they can get your organs.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
No, this is so funny that people think that you
into the ear. They don't look at your license and
go yeah, put him over and you know I left,
he's gonna go to organ donations.
Speaker 7 (11:06):
I just wanted to debunk that one because we hear
it all the time.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
No, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
We have people texting in not even know that you
are an organ donor. You're on events and way after.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Because the rumor out there is it's a possibility. People
were texting us saying you should ask Laurie about whether
or not well. People are watching their watch while I
slowly suffocate so they could take my organs rightly through
my wallet. So this has been amazing, Larry, that is
not true speaking with you and I don't do you
guys agree? I mean, this is just amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
This is amazing on so many levels.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
We could go on and on. Thank you so much
for your time and God bless you. And if ever
you need a liver, don't don't don't come run into me.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
We're gonna take your heart, all right, See my heart
it's golden.
Speaker 7 (12:01):
You're not gonna find it. Let me tell you.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Shut up, keep a menace, right. We love you, Laurie,
thank you for listening to us, have a great.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Day, thank you, thank you. Guys.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Here the Elvis Duran after party
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Dateline NBC
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