Team Liberty Co-Managers on the Importance of Organ Donation

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Patti DiSanto, Co-Manager, Team Liberty whose son is a heart transplant recipient, and Mike Strusiak, Co-Manager, Team Liberty, who is a kidney and pancreas recipient, to talk about the importance of organ donation and the 2020 Transplant Games.

12/11/2019 #2265

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Welcome to One on One. I'm Steve Adubato. One on two today. We are pleased to welcome Patti DiSanto and Mike Strusiak who are co-managers of something called Team Liberty. This is part of the New Jersey Sharing Network, which is an organization we've done a lot of work with in organ and tissue donation. What is Team Liberty? And what does it have to do with a big event coming up in 2020? Look at that setup! Go ahead. What do you got? Well, Team Liberty is a group of people who get together, composed of recipients, donors, advocates, plain volunteers, that are actually promoting transplantation and the need for more donors to be on the list. So we could save more and more lives. So we're making people aware, and we're actually teaching them what transplantation is about, and what happens, and what's the great benefits of it? And as you know Steve, the games are coming here in 2020. Check out Transplant Games. We'll show the website for the Sharing Network. You can check it out. That's a big... that's a national event, no? Yes. Every state in the United States will be here. Even Hawaii. And even Australia will be here. And they come... Tell folks your connection... I'm sorry. Tell folks why you're directly involved? 12 years ago on September 12th, I just celebrated my 12th anniversary. I had a pancreas-kidney transplant. It was a great gift given to me by Kristen Theresa O'Hara. She died in a car accident 12 years ago. And that's why I am involved. Every day is a gift from her. And I'm trying to give back to help save other lives. As it's often referred to, the Gift of Life? The Gift of Life. You have a powerful story as well? I do. My son Joe received a heart transplant 13 years ago when he was 12. He's now 25. He's doing great. He experienced graduation from high school, graduation from college. Now he works. He's out in the world off the payroll. And he's living everyday because he got a second... You mean off the payroll, meaning off of your...? Off... [laughter] The family payroll. Yeah. But he's living everyday, because somebody saved his life. You know, for those of you who know what we do, you know that there's a series of programs... actually, as we do this program, we just aired a back-to-back special from a race that you guys have every year. Check out our website. It'll come up if you want to see that. But what always strikes me... and I recently did a seminar for you and your colleagues on storytelling. On the importance of storytelling and communicating, right? How comfortable are most of..."